Is raw speed everything?
One of the things I used to see is the "contention ratio".
It's not mentioned any more. Internet use has maybe changed, from just web pages, which can more more-or-less intermittent, towards streaming video.
The advertised speed is about what the connection to the exchange can physically deliver. How the ISP can deliver data to the exchange matters too.
Maybe it matters how much data per person can get to the customer, I am not sure that the upgrade from basic ADSL would make all that much difference to me. What I see suggests that the next step to the internet is my real limit. Performance suffers when the kids are home from school, for everyone in the village, whether that have anyone else in the house or not.
I am apparently getting worse ping times to the USA than I was getting via a dial-up modem. There's only so much an ISP can do about the speed of light. Yet one site I connect to, purportedly providing me with an international service, warns me that my ping time is too long. Their physical servers are in Arizona, and I suspect that;s a little bit too far from their head office in San Francisco for their own staff to get the recommended ping time.
I don't think any single number is useful, it can be a bit complicated for adverts, which assume a somewhat less intelligent audience (They're legalised con games.), and too many things keep changing.
(I have mised feelings about your reference to farmers. The government expects farmers to have internet connections to do business, and then does sod all to make their systems usable with slow internet connections. How would you feel if you couldn't fill in your tex return because your internet is too slow? Do you want HMRC breathing down your nexk like a rabid werewolf?)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
