I have a cheap plan, $28/mo, with Spectrum that was grandfathered by Time Warner's ELP (Everyday Low Price) plan. That plan started at $15/mo when I first got it, now it's up to $28.<p>I was on a 50MBit plan with Time Warner for $55/mo, but every year they'd raise my rates, I'd have to call to negotiate with them, and the final time, they said they could lower the new rate from $65 to $60, but that was the best they could do. I told them "How about this: you can lower my rate to $45/mo (because now I'm mad), or I will switch to your ELP plan for $15/mo". The dumbasses let me switch to ELP, which I did. At the time it was 3Mbit down, 1Mbit up, and you know what? I could hardly tell the difference. I had done some research first and found that 720p streaming only requires 1.5-2Mbit/s. And sure enough, Youtube worked fine, Netflix TV streaming worked fine (at 720p), with no streaming pauses. At some point Spectrum upgraded me to 20Mbit down but still 1Mbit up.<p>I have just 1 person in the house, so these low rates wouldn't work in a family with 3 kids. But what many people don't realize is that short ping times are much more important for decent Internet performance rather than bandwidth. That's why DSL is "damn slow loading", because the ping time (latency) is usually higher.<p>I can get higher bandwidth now if I want it, either with AT&T fiber (100Mbit symmetric) or Spectrum (100-200Mbit down, up to around 35Mbit up). The problem is, <i>it is expensive</i> compared to what I actually need. The network companies want people to think that they need all this speed, so they keep raising their top speed, eliminating the lower-speed plans, and increasing prices.<p>Yes, it would be great if everyone had 100Mbit symmetric <i>inexpensively</i>. But forcing everyone into $50/mo or more plans, which I suspect will be the networking companies' goal, is not a good solution. I'd much rather have a 15 down, 5 up plan for $15/mo than a 100/100 plan for $50+/mo.