Broadband how fast do I need?

No none whatsoever. Ours is 70meg and more than adequate.

Check out the upload speeds as well. That scaled with the download so we went a faster download mainly to get a 70 mbit upload which makes cloud backup and the likes run very smoothly.

Are you wired or on WiFi?

Check the speed of your WiFi as there's no point in exceeding this, unless you have any wired devices that rely on data.

You can click on your WiFi icon in the task bar, see Properties and check the speed.  My desktop on WiFi 6 currently shows 649 Mbps. Work laptop is much slower.

FYI, 2 of us WFH, stream and a kid gaming and 75 Mbps over copper was fine.  Now got 300Mpbs FTTP for less money and day to day there's not a noticeable difference unless downloading big files.

It's not the speed that's important but the quality - 10meg is fine, don't overpay so in your case 70meg.

I quite happily work as a software developer from home with the cheapest 100Mbps package on fibre while the other half is on her computer or streaming video etc, I don't think any of my WiFi kit even passes the full 100Mbps through.

Think we're something like 60 Mb/s on DSL (Plusnet's cheapest service), streams fine. We both WFH and I'm always connected to remote machines and never have a problem.

Is the wifi signal strong through out the house? We have a connection coming in of 300mbps. By the time its gone through our mesh network to the weakest part of the house its down to about 40 mbps

Our son has a ps4. Some games will take say 3hrs to update at 100mbps, and less than 1hr at 300mbps.

If you 100% know you dont need to extend the range of your router I would say a minimum of 100mbps.

70Mb/s sounds fine for your needs, most contracts allow you to easily increase speeds during the contract term anyway so makes sense to start low and increase if needed.

I don’t game. Theres only 2 of us that WFH and we stream TV and music.

That's basically us - we manage with 40 ish mb download. Don't feel the need for more.

This now leaves me with options of 70to900meg.

Now i know more is best but…

I don’t game. Theres only 2 of us that WFH and we stream TV and music.

Is there any benefit to going over 100meg connection?

The speed you need is so very much down to your personal circumstances, I do love these threads as there's a sort of reverse willy waving contest going on - 'I'm a graphic designer and upload 5gb files daily and have 6 people streaming at 4k and 4 people gaming and my 10mbps connection is more than adequate...'

In your current circumstances, 100mbps is probably enough. But might your usage change at any point over the next 2 years (presuming a 24 month contract)? Streaming at 4k uses 15-25mpbs, WFH issues 5mbps for video calls (I'm guessing you don't need to upload/download large files regularly).

Gaming doesn't actually require fast speeds, only a few Mbps up and down - but latency and connection reliability is more important. What does benefit from fast speeds however is the size of games and updates. A recent update to a game I play was 60gb. At 50mbps you're looking at 3hrs to download.

I've recently gone from 5g broadband with 600-700mbps download and 50mbps upload (and increased occurrences of DNS drop outs) to Youfibre 1000/1000mbps. It's bloody brilliant. The 500mbps package was £3 a month less. That 60bg patch I spoke about above? Took me about 12 minutes to download.

Do I need 1000mbps 99% of the time? No. But God damn it's nice to have when I need the speed. And the latency is cracking, sub 5ms ping most of the time, and of course a rock solid connection.

I would say, check that the 100mbps package is using the fttp infrastructure as that speed is normally done over fttc, which is less reliable. And look at the prices - you might find that 500mbps from one provider is cheaper than 100mbps from another. It's always nice to have the headroom, to liken it to riding a bike, it's much nicer to be riding nowhere near your limit, be that talent or heart rate/fitness, rather than being on the ragged edge with no allowance for increasing your speed.

Also, WiFi speeds - yes WiFi 5 is only 550mbps or so max but if you buy any new laptop/phone etc then it's going to be WiFi 6 or faster which allows for well over 1gbps. So I wouldn't worry about that too much.

I have gigabit, the only machine that troubles it is the Xbox, nothing else, not even 4k streaming uses anywhere near what call of duty on its own uses.

100 is fine for most, and most ISPs let you increase speed/cost within contract if it wasn't.

As said, main thing you might want faster for is better upload speeds. Our ISP (Zen) do 18mbps upload on the basic 100 package, but 47mbps upload on the next one up (300 down, for a fiver more a month). That does make a decent difference if you're chucking big files around, particularly if one or both of you are on a video call too.

Weirdly this can be location specific, agree that 100mb should be more than adequate for what you need but caution on comparing on just the numbers.

Different exchanges have different kit in (if any at all) from the different operators, some will just use openreach to provide connections further back into the operators core network. As such it can then have an impact, good and bad, on the service your locality will get. With the reliability of fibre these differences are getting much easier to spot so the operators have less opportunity to hide behind (its your dodgy copper guv) other issues, and so the differences can be negligible.

Ask your neighbours who are also on fttp how their service seems.

when using the comparison sites bear in mind that some operators will also offer discounts if you move your mobiles to them also.

Used to have a EE copper connection on wifi that was 70mbps at the router and 50mpbs where we needed it which was fine, to be honest.  What wasn't fine was regular speed drops and cut outs (very annoying when you're trying to work or watch telly)

Fibre was dug into the road with introductory offers, so went for 900mbps fibre connection (free for 9 months  -the 900 was just as free as the 300).  Speed was actually no better in the corners of the house where we needed it, regularly pegged down to half speed and slightly less regular cut-outs.  The free period came to an end, I dropped to 150 (18m contract, 6 months free!) and wired the house up.  Probably still more than we need most of the time, but it's absolutely steady and been 100% reliable in 6 months.   145-160, up and down.

I don’t game. Theres only 2 of us that WFH and we stream TV and music.

That’s basically us – we manage with 40 ish mb download. Don’t feel the need for more.

And us, and we manage (just) on about 10. More would be nice, 40 would be great, 70 would be incredible, 900 would be absurd

After 3yrs of 4g goodness we’ve finally caught up with the modern world with full fibre to the door!

Aer you rural located and limited to 1 provider ? Just check out their T&C's. We can only get Airband fibre as we are rural. Openreach used to be a 24hr service agreement through sky. Airband is 72hrs. (big difference when working from home) oh and these small startup country rural providers tend to have shit customer services and not enough staff.

However in theory fibre should be more stable so less risks overall.

Your download habbit will change. We went from barely being able to watch netflix etc. Now we watch more stuff on Netflix/YoutTube etc in High Definition. Most months we now use over 100gb of streaming stuff. (which as others have said wont stretch a half decent connection) but you will change your online behaviour.

Just upgraded to Fibre after years of it being promised that it was only a few months away. Should be getting my new router today or tomorrow.

I've gone for the 60mbps package cos it was offered at a significant discount. Insane that you can pay less for more!

To be fair my current standard broadband is consistent at 15mbps but it runs into issues on video calls especially if the phone or laptop is trying to backup at the same time.

We have cable from a previous era which is now part of Virgin Media.  We have 279 down and 27 up.  In the house we a mesh network (Linksys Orbi) so you get those speeds.

It is overkill for the vast majority of the time, but struggled with 5 separate MS Teams call the other day.  I would like to have faster upload speeds as doing backups to the cloud can be time consuming.

We do pay far too much for it, though!

Streaming at 4k uses 15-25mpbs

I believe iTunes movies can be around 40mbps, with 25 being the minimum recommended.

Kind of depends what you do WFHing. For me, I occasionally upload large files, and paying for 900 gave a significant boost in upload speeds.

70 is probably enough but if you buy a 4k telly at some point it might automatically start using 4k which can be a lot, as above.

But more significant is the quality of the provider. Our local FB page is full of people asking if anyone else's Sky or Virgin broadband is down. Ours has gone down once in I think 4 years, for an hour at about 3am. To be fair it may have gone down at 3am at other times and I just wasn't awake to notice it!

Im just back after a week in broadband hell. No signal, no landline phone, nothing, nowt,nada. Turns out the outside line was corroded.

Anyway. For years with talk talk my speed has been about 16mbs, which was pretty instant for gaming, general web use etc.During this last week while the line was constantly dropping, the speed has been dropping too(engineers said it does that till it finds a stable speed) so for most ofo the week until the signal was lost completely I was getting about 5mbs. This speed worked ok for general web surfing, posting replies on here etc but pics took a few seconds more to download, and you tube vids would stutter or hand(buffering)

.

Cut to chase....

So from that anywhere from say 10-15mbs would get you good speed for just about everything the average user would need.

Since getting reconnected, which was today, only 30mins ago the engineer has told me my speed is running at 40mbs 😀

I've just had an upgrade offer to 2Gbps.

I'm currently using 100/100. Which is absolutely rock solid reliable. Ping is well under 10.

Can do 2 concurrent video calls (one is secured and heavily encrypted due to being government work) and a stream or two, or one of the kids gaming without any slowing of anything. Also do large secure file transfers etc. Business applications with security etc.

Only "sticking point" is downloading big updates, but that's more of a matter of planning ahead. (I sometimes just switch the computers on before bed and set all and any updates to be uploaded and installed.)

I won't be upgrading.

I went from 70 to 500 because of a silly offer, I notice zero difference other than when I do a speed test.

Nothing at the other end wants to offer you 500mb, so its basically pointless unless you run an office full of people or similar or the upload speed on the lower services is terrible.

Insane that you can pay less for more!

I'd assumed this was an effort to move people off the old copper lines. Seem to remember there is a plan to turn the old stuff off in a few years.

We've just 'downgraded' from 250 Virgin to 30-40 copper Plusnet (only fibre available is Virgin).

Better wifi signal upstairs, not noticed any significant speed difference.

And we don't have to deal with Virgin, utterly horrible customer service.

Lots of comments about WiFi in this thread. You need to be conscious that you can have the fastest internet but if your WiFi is crap then you'll still struggle to get a good speed at the far corners of the house. Also bear in mind that your WiFi won't drop your internet speed by a % based on distance, it will just drop your WiFi speed. So if your WiFi only manages 20mbps at the corner of your house on an 80mbps internet connection, getting faster internet won't speed it up.

Anyway after my mini rant we used to have copper with FYTC. Got 80mbps down and 20mbps up, which is as fast as you can go on that infrastructure. ISP was zen and the router supplied was good.

Worked fine in lockdown with me WFH (IT), the three kids doing home schooling and my wife also WFH. All using teams or similar.

Have moved now and have FTTP. We're locked into the developers ISP, no OpenReach, which is a different rant. Anyway we went for 250mbps as the eldest wanted to download COD updates quicker. For the rest of us there's on perceivable difference.

So short version I think you'll be fine with 70mbps but if possible choose a good ISP and get a decent WiFi router that can ideally support a mesh network if required.