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FTTP broadband - what speed do you really need?

If you run a business from home, especially with multiple users, or home-working & using collaborative or cloud-hosted applications then higher-bandwidth may well help to make the user-experience better. Though as someone above said, even for downloads it may well be that for line-speeds above 100Mb/s or so, the download-time is server-limited anyway.

As regards Yoof gaming apps etc - unless they are prepared to pay for it themselves, I say tough!
 
I’m with virgin media and when the pandemic struck we were on 350 mb @ about £56 a month phoned them up and told them we couldn’t afford that so the guy told me to go on the basic package (38mb or something) @£27 a month he said that we’ll never notice the difference and he was spot on its now nearly £40 a month though.

At the time there were four adults in the house all with iPhones and MacBook Pro’s plus ATV and music streaming from the internet the service has been more or less faultless since but the price rise are terrible.
 
twotone said:
I’m with virgin media and when the pandemic struck we were on 350 mb @ about £56 a month phoned them up and told them we couldn’t afford that so the guy told me to go on the basic package (38mb or something) @£27 a month he said that we’ll never notice the difference and he was spot on its now nearly £40 a month though.

At the time there were four adults in the house all with iPhones and MacBook Pro’s plus ATV and music streaming from the internet the service has been more or less faultless since but the price rise are terrible.
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If you want to stay with virgin, they will go down to £24 a month with a bit of effort. (basic fibre broadband)
I reckon we could have got virgin down to £20 a month, but couldn’t be bothered with them.
 
Big Tabs said:
If you want to stay with virgin, they will go down to £24 a month with a bit of effort. (basic fibre broadband)
I reckon we could have got virgin down to £20 a month, but couldn’t be bothered with them.
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Thanks, I'm kind of stuck with them as they do fibre to the house BT are here too but it's overhead copper wires into the house via the phone line plus they're extortionate and have terrible customer service however when I was with them I was with BT business which were about a million times better than the BT domestic service/

We only have broadband nothing else ie TV or landline my 'landline' is with Andrews & Arnold Ltd who are a voip provider, I pay them about £2 a month for a phone service including phone calls over the internet previously I was paying BT business £56 a month.
 
twotone said:
Thanks, I'm kind of stuck with them as they do fibre to the house BT are here too but it's overhead copper wires into the house via the phone line plus they're extortionate and have terrible customer service however when I was with them I was with BT business which were about a million times better than the BT domestic service/

We only have broadband nothing else ie TV or landline my 'landline' is with Andrews & Arnold Ltd who are a voip provider, I pay them about £2 a month for a phone service including phone calls over the internet previously I was paying BT business £56 a month.
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You just bluff Virgin by telling them you are looking for a cheaper broadband deal. Have a look at what you can get off other providers and then phone Virgin and barter with them until you get a deal you are happy with. You might have to threaten to leave to get that.
 
Now swapped over to Vodafone broadband.

‘ Openreach’ chap came over and sorted the connection thingy. Not bothering with the landline, although The Wife feels glad we have access in case things go “tits up.”
I cleaned and connected our very old phone, rang the number just to hear it ring - listened to the dial tone for a while… then disconnected it, put it in a plastic bag to go back in the loft. :):)

All household devices now linked to the new router/broadband.
Hopefully, that is that.
 
The new service has just gone live. Went for Vodafone Pro 200 in the end, had an existing customer deal which made it not much more than the basic 100, plus has 4G dongle back up in case of an outage. So far it’s a revelation!
 
Broadband speed is a bit like camera megapixels. You don’t need as much as you’d think. 30 to 50Mb is loads, after that for Teams or gaming you’re better going for whatever gives the lowest latency. You’ll notice poor latency more often than worrying about bandwidth if you use Teams/Zoom.

Don’t ignore upload speeds either…
 
We currently have 14 devices, max is about 20, the most needy users at any one time would be:
2 x Teams
1 x movie streaming
1 x web browsing

Most of the other devices are cameras, Alexas - not intensive users.

We have 46Mb with 8Mb upload, ping 8 to 10mS (generally). Performance is fine - no issues, except very occasionally when it's been very wet.

For comparison, on 4G I get 19Mb download, 3Mb upload with a ping of 38mS. Whilst my phone does 5G, it's not available in my locality.
 
I was with Plusnet using an FTTC connection. Problem was all the twisted wire connections in the connection to the cabinet from the home. Signicant ooutages when Openreach chaps messed around with the cable between the house and the cabinet. The faults had to be reported to Plusnet who then had to contact Openreach to fix the problem, plus I had to run a system check of the connections in the house otherwise I could be liable for fixing any inhouse problems.
Currently with Virgin, they are not immune to problems but I think they are more reliable than the FTTC Plusnet connection. I have got a 100mb connection and the rental price includes my VIrgin mobile phone service. However I have to negotiate my rental fee every year or so.
 
The thing is that in most cases the 'last mile' to your home will be via Openreach. The exceptions are ISPs such as Virgin that bought out Cable and Wireless and thus have cable to the premises in places like London. The speed that is quoted doesn't mean much as you will be in contention i.e. shared with other customers. You may well be clocked at 100Mbps to the cabinet but then you'll share that bandwidth with maybe 100 to 200 other users so your throughput could vary between 100Mbps and 0.5Mbps.

In practice most of us need very little bandwidth provided it is clean and free from any serious error retransmissions. It was not long ago that I supplied dual 2Mbps lines to a customers hub site to support their whole business and that included major banks, Pharmaceuticals etc.

Plusnet are just another sales/marketing department of BT such as BT retail and BT commercial. They all use the Openreach network.

DV
 
I recently made plans to leave Virgin.
The 100mb service I had was due to go up from £24/ month to £42 (end of contract), so I cancelled.
Not straight away, but a week or so later they phoned to speak and asked what deal I had gone for. I said £18/month with another provider. They said they would check what they could offer and then phoned again a couple of days later and offered me my existing 100mb service for £17/month, fixed for 18 months.
Not sure if that sort of offer is common, but it may be in the pipeline for anyone who’s just cancelled with them.

Kevin
 
Of course you negotiate with virgin every year, ask for the Scottish contingent if you are not getting anywhere.

Our family is smashing circa 60-70 gigs a day, wont be doing that on 38 meg connection lol.
 
garyi said:
Of course you negotiate with virgin every year, ask for the Scottish contingent if you are not getting anywhere.

Our family is smashing circa 60-70 gigs a day, wont be doing that on 38 meg connection lol.
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If my arithmetic is correct (a tall order)…60Gb. A 38Mb/s line would take 26 mins to transfer 60Gb. HD films are up to 3Gb, Netflix suggest a min of 5Mb for HD films. 38Mb isn’t so bad. Maybe though my arithmetic is off.
 
clivem2 said:
If my arithmetic is correct (a tall order)…60Gb. A 38Mb/s line would take 26 mins to transfer 60Gb. HD films are up to 3Gb, Netflix suggest a min of 5Mb for HD films. 38Mb isn’t so bad, there’s more to network throughput than raw speed. Maybe though my arithmetic is off.
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3.5 hours. Broadband is 38 Mega Bits not Mega Bytes.
 
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