Well, it might not be much. Maybe even at some point it really is a race to the bottom kind of situation but why make judgement about it ? If ISPs compete offe

Well, it might not be much. Maybe even at some point it really is a race to the bottom kind of situation but why make judgement about it ? If ISPs compete offering bigger and bigger bandwidth and faster and faster ping then it becomes pointless at some point again as only thing new competitor achieves is taking place of the incumbent without contributing significantly to what customers get. 100GB/sec or 1TB/sec, who cares. 1 second tick is similar to 100GB cap - supposedly there is no point at making the technology more efficient any more. Your argument comes down to: "The cost of providing new technology is higher than gains customer get and that is achieved by putting previous provider of the services out of business - hence waste". It might be true or it might not. We just usually don't care much because that is one of the situations where free market/competition does well in practice. Those technological arm races have other benefits as well, you never know what other uses the technology is going to have or what kinds of scientific advancement it stimulates. One day you may have 35% faster ping from Tokyo to New York because instead of optic fibers the connection will use some of technology mentioned in the article.