You've set me off.
From about 1987 I suppose it would be, I did computer conferencing on my OUBS course. Pre World Wide Web. I used a 2.4Kbps BT modem that I bought second hand in an auction for £40. It was in a lovely steel crackle-painted cabinet and I believe it cost four figures when new. Ordinary phone line, pre-DSL, and when I received messages they appeared one letter at a time. I'm sure I recall being told some time later when we had consumer-friendly dial up internet that the fabled "laws of fuzacks" meant that 56kbps was the absolute limit for getting data down a phone line. They really believed it too. A friend of mine with a very large brain worked for BT and was later involved in developing broadband technology.
When broadband arrived some people in my village got 4Mbps. I never got more than 2. Some are still on ADSL and they seem to be getting better speeds than before- perhaps the contention has moved to fibre?
I've just opted for <66Mbps FTTC from <38, really with contention in mind. All our TV at the moment is streamed, some in 4k, and there are predictable times when we get a bit of buffering although I think it is probably the server that is slow rather then the network. I should really speak to my friend with the big domed head about it, he's still inventing things even though he is retired.
Gigabit internet is real of course but it still seems like science fiction to me. As do smart phones. It all depends where you started from, so to me it's amazing to think that my 35 year-old son can have no real memory of pre-WWW time. 4 and 6 year-old grandchilders use tablets, I didn't have a pocket calculator until I was an adult.
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