TL; DR summary
Fibre (Fibre to the Premises - FTTP)
Technology that supports speeds up to 1Gbps (and more)
Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC)
Technology that supports speeds up to 80Mbps
ADSL2(21CN) around 20-24Mbps on a good day. 5 miles/8km from exchange is the theoretical limit and expect 1Mbps if a super stability profile is applied to your 'long line'
Cable (Fibre to cabinet, coax cable to property) - I'm on a 200Mbps connection currently, but throttling is applied regularly by telco.
An important thing to note - prior experience with customers tells me that not everyone understands that their connection speed to the router (via WiFi or ethernet) is not the same thing as how fast the their broadband connection is. I've enjoyed several discussions with people on the telephone where they're insisting it's connected at for example 54Mbps (802.11g) or 100Mbps (LAN/ethernet) but the speed test only shows 16Mbps or so. Even had someone say that "it didn't matter whether it's bits or bytes, I'm paying for a 20 Meg connection".
I feel that attention to detail is important
