Speed isn't really the issue, it's value up to a certainl pain threshold for me. At first I though maybe a good measure is $/Mbps.
Verizon DSL runs me $30/month and I get 2.6M down and 700k up very consistently with no outages. Hey, 30/3 = $10 per Mbps of data, not bad.
Cablevision keeps trying to sell me on their $55 ISP deal so I can get 15Mbps down and about 10M up. That's 55/25 or only just over $2 per Mbps. Better deal right? Not if you only need 3 Mbps.