Some interesting information has been posted on what appears to be the average internet speed.
While some claim full ADSL2 speeds of around 20Mb/s the average seems to be around 4Mb/s with half the users obviously getting much less.
At the moment ADSL2 delivered by landline is the most reliable because the user has exclusive use of the transmission media. The three parameters that limit the speed are 1. The bandwidth of your land line (inversly proportional to its length). 2. The capacity of the terminal in the exchange that drives the landline that has to share the available bandwidth between the users on line and 3. The external bottlenecks of capacity in the central terminals.
Wireless has the additional problems. The bandwidth of the transmitter (tower) has to be shared amongst all the users on line at a given time. and the necessity to re-transmit packets that do not arrive correctly. The higher the carrier frequency of the system the wider will be the bandwidth but as the frequency increases other problems of of the transmission media come into effect eg multi-path, reflections causing phase cancellation etc.
Fibre optics, The way we are going. At the moment it offers great capacity point to point but the bandwidth of the fibre optics is finite and with all the things that are proposed to be carried on a fibre optic network. I expect that sometime in the future it will also become saturated.
I think that smoke signals may be the way to go
or how about the now almost forgotten technique of letter writing.
Barry