Re: A question about cost:value of access in the US
About 40 USD for 25 Mb down, 5 Mb up. At opportune times [1], my Ookla Speedtest results consistently come in at 27 and 6, so at least I'm "getting what I paid for" [2].
1. Early morning such as before 8:00. In the fall when at-home school was starting we were having lots of issues and I was checking almost daily. But...
2. The real problem was the provider's crappy all-in-one modem/HPNA-over-coax/Ethernet/Wi-Fi "gateway", the Wi-Fi in particular. I resolved that with a $35 Netgear Nighthawk from Walmart to everyone's relief. Paying for service is only acceptable if your equipment can actually handle the traffic load: 3 kids with simultaneous Teams (full video, Wi-Fi) + me on Zoom (desktop share only, no video, wired) is our worst case when we all overlap 9:30-10:00 almost every day.