I can remember just ten years ago when it was common to have a 56k modem and use a phone line to connect to the Internet. You could expect a download rate of 5-6KB/sec and watching any kind of video would take hours to download even a short clip. Websites had to be very sparing with images and sites had mostly text to conserve bandwidth.
As high speed internet came out, there was a wide disparity between people on modems, and those with high speed internet who could get speeds of 100-500KB/sec. Today, such speeds are commonplace, and most people are getting speeds in excess of 1MB/sec, which allows for streaming high quality videos and almost instantaneous loading of websites. Internet providers have come a long way in a short period of time.