We opted for a "second tier" package with slightly higher speed than quoted for the "special offer." Ours has no problem streaming video from YouTube or from typical TV News pages, although there's sometimes a few seconds delay for loading; and the "actual speeds" (shown for some sites) while loading often are not above the "maximums" quoted for the cheaper service. The problem is that it's very difficult to get a provider to tell you what they consider a "minimum guaranteed" rate for a given service.

If daddy isn't a real video addict, the lower rates should be okay, if he's willing to allow for a little download time before the newsclips or YouTube videos start. A step up in speed would be recommended if he wants to watch "streaming video" for feature length web TV. If he expects to download movies or full episodes of TV shows, he certainly will want a faster service - perhaps much faster (T1 anybody?).

Upload speeds are generally significantly slower than download speeds for all the "economically viable" plans. In the past, the difference has been very much greater for cable than for DSL, with some "very fast" cable (for downloads) close to dial-up speed for uploads. At dial-up speeds, sending an email with attachments over a couple of megabytes can be tedious. The DSL lines that I've looked at generally apply approximately a 20MB per email attachment limit, and it seems to cause no noticeable delay for the few "larger" clips we've sent on our DSL - although we haven't tried anything that really approaches the 20MB limit.

The difference between cable up/down speeds may have changed some, as I haven't checked recently; and the difference may not be too important for users who arent' into "video sharing" or some other form of bandwidth hoggishness.

John