As an Australia->America expat, you have to compare to what we have now. At the moment the highest grade connection attainable for most residents of Australia

As an Australia->America expat, you have to compare to what we have now. At the moment the highest grade connection attainable for most residents of Australia is ADSL2+, with a max speed of 24Mbps (realistically you're lucky to see 10). This usually comes with a bandwidth cap that varies based on the price you pay (e.g. [0]) as well as a contract. For a moderately high usage household (streaming video, YouTube, downloading video games), you'll usually have to pay ~$90 for one of the better performing providers (such as Telstra) or ~$80 for one of the lesser providers without a cap (e.g. TPG and the like which often offer unlimited but have plenty of congestion issues). Further, if you're not in a metropolitan area, usually you pay an extra $20-$30 monthly premium. Compare that to the US, where most (or many) [1] households have access to 50-100Mbps cable for a reasonable (I pay ~$75/month for 150Mbps in a Comcast monopoly area) price. America isn't great compared to what could be but it's a whole lot better than Australia. [0]: https://www.telstra.com.au/broadband/home-broadband https://www.telstra.com.au/broadband/home-broadband [1]: http://www.broadbandmap.gov/speed http://www.broadbandmap.gov/speed