You don't "need" it of course. And you won't use it all the time obviously. But have you tried buying Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 yesterday? Downloading that

You don't "need" it of course. And you won't use it all the time obviously. But have you tried buying Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 yesterday? Downloading that > 20 GB. Your 50 Mbit/s are 6.25 MByte/second and it takes 3200 seconds = a bit less than an hour. With a Gigabit connection you need 160 seconds. Not everybody needs a guaranteed Gigabit. But it would be nice sharing up to a Gigabit with several people and dynamically add bandwidth if that group of people hits the limits long enaugh.