Is 150 mbps broadband necessary for most people?

Heliocentric

Rob5342 said:

If you find 11mbps ok then 150mbps is well in excess of what you'd need, but given that it may be cheaper you might as well have it. Fibrehop on CityFibre offer 150mbps for £26 a month for example. Phone calls are cheaper with mobile plans than with home phone plans, we have three mobiles each with unlimited calls so we don't bother having a home phone.

Is 11mbps with ADSL the same as 11mbps with fibre? 

JSmithy45AD

Heliocentric said:

Rob5342 said:

If you find 11mbps ok then 150mbps is well in excess of what you'd need, but given that it may be cheaper you might as well have it. Fibrehop on CityFibre offer 150mbps for £26 a month for example. Phone calls are cheaper with mobile plans than with home phone plans, we have three mobiles each with unlimited calls so we don't bother having a home phone.

Is 11mbps with ADSL the same as 11mbps with fibre? 

11Mbps is 11Mbps no matter how you measure it.

victor2

JSmithy45AD said:

Heliocentric said:

Rob5342 said:

If you find 11mbps ok then 150mbps is well in excess of what you'd need, but given that it may be cheaper you might as well have it. Fibrehop on CityFibre offer 150mbps for £26 a month for example. Phone calls are cheaper with mobile plans than with home phone plans, we have three mobiles each with unlimited calls so we don't bother having a home phone.

Is 11mbps with ADSL the same as 11mbps with fibre? 

11Mbps is 11Mbps no matter how you measure it.

But when one ISP gives "up to" 11Mbps, it can be very different to another's, especially if they are arriving at the property through different systems.

moneysaver1978

It is a bit subjective.

A relative and her partner on a FTTP with Virgin with speeds of 300Mb (or something like that) while we have 60Mb FTTC - we all have similar jobs and interests with Zoom, Netflix, etc. and we didn't notice any difference.

The only difference was that they have had more outages while we have had no stability or connection issues since we moved back in August. We also pay a lot less for our broadband.

So it all depends on how much you are willing to spend and how you feel about the providers (I have never liked Virgin or Sky).

LeesArt

Heliocentric said:

Hello,

I'm with Sky broadband on a very low speed - at around 11mbps - which is perfectly fine for me. I have no issues with it - just the cost of it at around £35 per month.

I'm looking to switch company but I'm now seeing very high numbers in terms of speed, like 150 mbps with Community Fibre and Hyperoptic (I'm in London). I mostly stream data, not download and if I do download, it doesn't take me long at all on my current speed. As for uploading, I very rarely do it. So do I need such a high speed?

When I tell people my current internet speed, it looks like they're about to have a heart attack.

Thanks.

For me the issue is not speed it is latency, a member of my family has 150mb and not only do they not get the speed but the latency is rubbish.

 If you go to Fast.com and do their basic test first, make a note of the speed, then tap Show More Info and look at the Unloaded and Loaded latency in ms.  Then tap on settings and change the max from 8 to 16 parallel connections, tick save config for this device and press save, then refresh the screen so the tests starts over.  Compare the speed with what you had before but the latency figure tells you if something is not what it could be.  I do not know if it is traffic shaping or port sharing but for the 150mb we tested it was dire and they live in London too.  Some ISP's are reported as port sharing rather than buying new routers, then if you complain they put you back on a dedicated port for 3 months.

We went to Spain a few months ago and stayed at a rural estate of houses in the mountains, I expected the internet to be dire but it was 305mb and with 16 processes it was still under 5ms.

I could easily get by on 11mb, I used a shared 11mb a while back and I used Netflix which was fine.  There is very little benefit in 4k, that same relative has a 4k TV but most of the content is not 4k.  I have dumped Netflix now so I can't say how good or bad it is but I used other streaming channels and they seem fine.  I have around 38mb, if I do that test above I get 24mb to 36mb with 12ms unloaded and between 85ms and 140ms loaded.

We are all being forced toward fibre, the entry level product is just there to create an artificial price point, people have reported that their supplier told them they will get 10mb delivered over fibre because ADSL has been ripped out, but the fibre is throttled down to punish you for paying less.