The higher the number the quicker the download. Thus if it takes 4 hours to download a file at a speed of 1mb it will only take 30 minutes at a speed of 8mb and only 10 minutes at 24mb. The high speed service will really come into it's own when you want to watch television or videos over the net. Rather than downloading the whole file and then start viewing you can 'stream' the video or watch live television as it happens. It is theoretically possible to watch live TV right now on a 2mb connection but the picture has to be very small and very jerky because the bandwidth isn't big enough to handle a full size picture.