You have to take into account that these measurements are download speeds. However what's the real bottleneck are upload speeds, which are far below that.
Also these measurements are short-term and for direct ISP-connectivity only (this is on what Nielson's observations are based on). These measurements and growth rates are in no way applicable to a decentralized multi-node network. In addition most ISPs have explicit or implicit data transfer limitations - they will throttle down your connection if you exceed a certain transfer volume.
So I fully agree with your assessment that Hearn's and Gavin's plan is horrible - in fact, it's even more horrible than you've shown.
There's no way I will ever support such a fork.
ya.ya.yo!
Correct ...I added 2 more items while you were typing. Except, keep in mind those speed are the total combined upload and download speeds so 31.94 Mbps average means 21.88MBps download and 9.86MBps upload in 12/2014 thus the situation is worse than what you are even suggesting.
When you look at many other countries the growth is much slower as well. I was deliberately taking one of the better case scenarios to be generous.
all these numbers I am citing are only considering Broadband as well, and not mobile which is much slower and with much lower soft caps.
All these users are sharing these node demands with other data , much of it streaming video which is very demanding. Their proposal will essentially make hosting a full node at home a thing of the past in time.