Outside of the question of "is it needed", it'll be interesting to see what happens now that Google has Unveiled WebP, a New Image Format for the Web.
Google explains that of all the bytes transmitted through the intertubes today, 65% is made up of images and photos. In other words, if there's an area where you can save on bandwith - and thus, speed up the web - it's image optimisation. To that end, Google has unveiled WebP, an image format which makes use of the techniques from VP8 video intra frame coding. The container format is lightweight, and based and based on RIFF.
Doesn't most of the people on the web have dsl/cable already now anyway? Is this really needed?
"Is this really needed?"
Yes it is.
Just because you have plenty of bandwidth doesn't mean you should waste it.
A lot of isp's are considering going back to metered plans, and if you even use cell phone tethering with a laptop those 2Mb web pages are a bit irritating.
We (still) have metered plans in Australia (no surprise considering how much our infrastructure wholesaler - yes that's singular - charges for bandwidth, really). As long as you don't spend too much time downloading "linux distros" and other "legitimate torrents" it's actually fairly hard to come up against the limits. Of course, we have 50GB limits now, which is a bit different to ye olde "Thoa shalt not exceed thy 30 megabyte download quota or we shall charge thee one doller per extra kilobyte"