The examples you're giving are mostly about stored data. We're able to foresee why you may need more, photos, videos, etc. On bandwidth, it's harder to imagine. With 50, you can stream multiple HD videos. What would 105 would give me? I don't know. May be Google Fiber subscribers can provide some insight since they have access to much more.
You answered your own question. How does the data get on those high capacity disks? The faster your pipe, the more content you can fill quickly / easily.
In my case it does not provide a compelling case. With 50mb, it is plenty fast and do not feel need for faster. backup of my content does not seem to require more bandwidth either for PCs. I use both Backblaze and Dropbox, and they both work in the background etc, again 50mb is plenty.
Thinking more about this, I think I may need more bandwidth if I were consuming more real-time high volume data. May be the upcoming virtual reality apps (Occulus, etc.) will be the next jump in bandwidth requirements.
In the UK it is typical to have an ad with huge font saying. "50 MBPS!!!" and a tiny footnote disclaiming "upto that speed, on a good day if you're close".
It's sad that things like speed or megapixels are a single easy to quote number because many people think more is better.
That seems to contradict the article. If they really do need to wire your cable to some other piece of equipment then perhaps the field tech is there for a good reason.
I have 6 mbps for $51/mo with AT&T. I quoted them 50 mbps for the same price with a local cable company.
I wanted higher speeds. They couldn't get me close to the other deal, so I told them they had to compete on price. They offered $35 with a year contract.
I told them I was going to get service with the cable company and call back to cancel and they dropped my price to %50 off for six months with no strings attached.
Same goes for business owners too. We had a 20Mbit fiber from our cable company where the multi year contract was expiring. We contacted a bandwidth broker to find us a better deal. He came back with a much better deal on fiber from the local telco. We submitted the telco contract to the cable company and they price matched us. We went from 20Mbit to 50Mbit and dropped the price by half. The broker cost somewhere around $300, and was the best money we ever spent.
Go back and watch a VHS tape recording of an over-the-air broadcast TV show. You will be amazed at how colossally crappy the quality of it is because you're now used to various levels of high-def TV. The quality we get used to is only going to go up from here.
Beyond that, look at Netflix's recommendations today:
To get 1080p streaming, you need 7 Mbps. To get 3D you need 12 Mbps. Now imagine you are streaming one 1080p show from Netflix, your wife is streaming another on a different device, your son's Minecraft server has 19 kids from school attached to it, your daughter is watching HD YouTube videos and your main computer is downloading Windows 8.1 updates.
That's why I have 75 M/bps downstream and 35 M/bps upstream through Verizon FIOS anyway. That and it was $74.99 per month including their Prime TV lineup and unlimited landline phone service.
Go back and watch a VHS tape recording of an over-the-air broadcast TV show. You will be amazed at how colossally crappy the quality of it is because you're now used to various levels of high-def TV. The quality we get used to is only going to go up from here.
I agree with your conclusion, but not necessarily your reasoning. By contrast, when I watch an actual DVD, it makes me wonder why we put up with the awful compression artifacts of most streaming video. Instead, I might argue that we need higher bandwidth just to get back to where we were, and then will need even more to get to the point where transmission speed is not the limiting factor.
and unlimited landline phone service
Again, the wonders of modern compression technology. It's amazing that "landline phone" is still considered a step up from VOIP, and yet it is!
Don't cellular providers now support wideband audio calls with certain handsets? For example, the Nexus 5 and iPhone 5(c|s) on T-mobile. How does wideband audio compare to a land line?
Traditional digital voice telephony is astonishingly good compared to anything we now use on mobiles. The problem with mobile has never been with the bandwidth, it's the packet loss. You can have as wide a band as you want but if you are dropping half the frames or they arrive at random times then it still sounds like shit. Isochronous circuit switching basically works perfectly, as long as the path can be established (busy signal is the failure mode here).
On VoIP with a good low loss path you can get amazing quality too. Skype for example sounds even better than digital circuit switched telephony.
Unless maybe you have a multi user household.
I pay $50 for 5mbps. It's highway robbery.