BT Full Fibre - 150Mb vs. 300Mb vs. 900Mb
Discussion
Moving to a new house soon that's got a proper full fibre connection with BT. They do three options: 150Mb, 300Mb or 900Mb and these respectively cost £40, £50 or £60 per month. I'm thinking the 300Mb is probably best - I'm not sure 150Mb is enough (despite my current connection being around 75Mb and it's fine) and the 300 is only £10 more. 900 is obviously way faster on paper, but am I right in thinking that without hardwiring stuff, the extra speed will mostly be pointless over Wi-Fi? Will be using the BT mesh discs to get a decent signal everywhere.
bunchofkeys said:
As you say, unless you're hardwired into the router, you're not going to see the top end bandwidth through Wi-Fi.
Even if you hard wire, you will find services at the other end are limited. We have a 300 service but, although it speed tests at that, never see anything close to that with real-world downloads of big content (e.g. console games). Never have noticeable issues if everyone is using it at the same time for gaming/films/work. Having come from a 50ish connection. 150 would probably be fine too, but wasn’t available when we ordered. David87 said:
I'm not sure 150Mb is enough (despite my current connection being around 75Mb and it's fine) .
How much too much do you buy at the supermarket?The only thing that would nudge me to the 300 is if the upload speed is significantly faster or I was WFH with large media "assets"
edit:
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&... may be worth a read: "How fast does your internet need to be?"
Edited by xeny on Monday 21st June 07:02
Internet “speed” is a bit of a misnomer it’s really measuring throughput.
Think of it like a pipe the larger it’s cross section the higher it’s capacity.
As others have said once you get to a critical point you’ll find it’s the other side that becomes the bottle neck rather than your connection.
For perspective a 4K video stream uses about 25 mb/s, a video call/conference is 4 mb/s
Unless you are regularly manipulating large files I would suggest 150 mb/s is more than sufficient for home and wfh use.
Think of it like a pipe the larger it’s cross section the higher it’s capacity.
As others have said once you get to a critical point you’ll find it’s the other side that becomes the bottle neck rather than your connection.
For perspective a 4K video stream uses about 25 mb/s, a video call/conference is 4 mb/s
Unless you are regularly manipulating large files I would suggest 150 mb/s is more than sufficient for home and wfh use.
Go for the 150Mbps and see how you go. Regrades on FTTP are very quick to deliver and are largely non-disruptive - downtime should be no more than a few seconds when the new settings are applied.
Many a business premises with several hundred users are running on 100Mbps leased lines with well under 50% utilisation. Most people tend to overestimate their requirements.
Many a business premises with several hundred users are running on 100Mbps leased lines with well under 50% utilisation. Most people tend to overestimate their requirements.
FTTP should be synchronous but BT in their wisdom have made it asynchronous. Therefore the upload speeds are far less than the download (whereas in most countries they are the same). For WFH with cloud environments and transfer data, I've found that higher upload speed is far more beneficial than a huge download speed. If 75 down was also 75 up, fine. But it's more like 75/18. I don't need 910 down but I want the 110 up
YMMV.
YMMV.
I moved to a new build recently and was going to go for 74mb, called them and they offered me 150 at £35pm with first 3 months half price, worked out £4 cheaper than 74mb over the contract - complete overkill for me as I live alone and share care of my two young kids half the time, but everything connected to it via wifi generally sees 142/30 at all times. Save yourself some money and opt for the 150 package, unless you need greater upload capacity.
I've just moved from a house with Vodafone Gigafast 200 to one with Vodafone Gigafast 500 (had to take over the old owners contract). As many have said using devices on Wifi your not going to get the best speeds, I'm hardwired as much as possible.
Were quite a heavy usage family but 200 was more than enough for us.
Were quite a heavy usage family but 200 was more than enough for us.
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