$70 for an internet connection is not cheap. The author just means that it's not a no-brainer for individuals currently on one of the big providers who are on a budget.
Comcast charges $65.95/mo. to $78.95/mo for 70mb/s in the Detroit metro area. $70/month for 1gbs service and not having to deal with Comcast is a no-brainer
In Utrecht, Online.nl is ~$54 for 50mbps fiber.
Fiber.nl is ~$44 euro for 50mbps fiber.
Per https://www.internetten.nl and online.nl
$70 for 1gbps rather beats that by a drastic margin. Many cities in the US are seeing gigabit consumer fiber deployments at that price range.
You need to factor in the marginal utility of added bandwidth. Few people can meaningfully utilise 20-50mbps (a full HD stream is <10mbps), much less 1gbps, so you're looking at paying $20-30 for, essentially, nothing.
For the record, I count myself in the group of people who can't utilise such a connection, although I'm squarely in the group of people who'd pay for the faster connection in a heartbeat regardless.
I would love higher BW but while I could afford it I already have my own cable modem and to upgrade would need to get special equipment from my ISP, which I would have to lease and deal with the inconvenience of giving back at one of their far away locations. It's been annoying the past so decided to pass.
But for anyone who is price sensitive doubling/tripling their internet bill is a non-starter.
Why is upload always so low? Is it expensive for upstream bandwidth?
Nah. Sometimes it's due to the last mile access technology being asymmetric (ADSL, cable, PON), but mostly it's to differentiate consumer products from business products.
Their asymetric bandwidth offering is configured that way on purpose, it isn't the hardware. They offer symetrical bandwidth if your line a business connection.
I've had FiOS residential and business over the _same_ line (different times, of course) and it goes to the same CO.
www.xfinity.com/internet-service.html