Any broadband experts around?

Netflix recommends 5mb for HD streaming
https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306

I've recently setup Netflix for my folks, they get around 5.5mb and they stream HD Netflix without issues.

Spotify will work with a connection as slow as 384kb, so 4mb would be plenty.

Ignore everybody telling you 4,5 or 6 mob won't be enough. It's plenty unless you are a power user.
 
like i said, on its own it may very well work. start adding in factors such as throttling at peak hours in an over subscribed areas and you may have issues.

im not making this stuff up for the lols.
 
neil_g said:
like i said, on its own it may very well work. start adding in factors such as throttling at peak hours in an over subscribed areas and you may have issues.

im not making this stuff up for the lols.
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Yup same here, man I can't get more and desperately want more as it just isn't enough. Sure perhaps if you are on your own with nothing else going on then fine. As I said before a household average of four with HD streaming (otherwise why have the nice big TV screen) and audio in decent quality and a Skype phone call or FaceTime etc it just isn't enough. Plenty of times it slows down and can't cope. I'm not making his stuff up from paper specs, I'm living it as there is not alternative where we live.
 
gramps said:
Had TalkTalk for years but then went to Virgin 120MB package for a specific high use requirement in business ... once I had retirement in sight I dropped Virgin to go back to TalkTalk and save myself a bundle of money. I've never had a major problem with Talk Talk and it just works for me ... I get around 8MB download and .8MB upload and it's enough for all of my needs, I just have to wait a little longer for things than when I had 120MB ... do I care?
You rarely hear much good reporting about a company, only complaints ... I can only report my own findings over many years of dealing with them :)
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Totally agree, been with them since Freeserve days and very happy indeed!
 
Nothing but problems with Talk Talk here, and it was the (lack of) resolution to those problems that made me leave.

Like most things - you don't really get to see the value of a product until you encounter the customer service supporting it. When my broadband stopped working, they said it was the phone line (it wasn't) the router (it wasn't) the computer (it wasn't). After 2 more days of no service it just started working again. No reason given, my case closed. Then there was another problem with their DNS servers. I use Google DNS - websites load fine. Talk Talk DNS - Page Not Displayed. Again the usual round of "it's your router/computer/phone line". When I explained that going to a 3rd party DNS fixed the problem their response was "OK so we can close the case then?"

I suspect that if you never need to call them with a problem, Talk Talk will be just as great as any SP that never has to deal with problems. For me though - I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. I told them that and they still have people knocking on my door and cold calling my house.

/Rage
 
dejongj said:
Yup same here, man I can't get more and desperately want more as it just isn't enough. Sure perhaps if you are on your own with nothing else going on then fine. As I said before a household average of four with HD streaming (otherwise why have the nice big TV screen) and audio in decent quality and a Skype phone call or FaceTime etc it just isn't enough. Plenty of times it slows down and can't cope. I'm not making his stuff up from paper specs, I'm living it as there is not alternative where we live.
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It must be terrible living in a backwater- come to Sunny Scotland and Civilisation! :)
I'm on about 95 -98MB, but we are heavy users in our house.
 
Quidco
Earn up to
£90 cashback

FREE
for 18 months + £17.70 line rental

Talk Talk here no Complaints
 
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From the usage requirements described by OP, going from 27 to 17, might not be noticeable. The thing is, it's not really just about the headline advertised speed. Or should I say, the headline advertised "UPTO" speed. Always remember it is UPTO and you may not get the full speed. Sometimes (as mentioned already) it's about local utilization/contention and quality of connection in terms of latency. I would never advise anyone these days to think they will be content with 4mbps, which is the other option mentioned. More and more things are reliant on internet delivery these days. For me and my household, I need the fastest I can afford as we have a large household with many different devices. I don't think I could ever go back in speed as you become so used to it. Just general daily productivity and doing quick things online...you soon become used to the speed and all your things working reliably.
 
kendo1 said:
It must be terrible living in a backwater- come to Sunny Scotland and Civilisation! :)
I'm on about 95 -98MB, but we are heavy users in our house.
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Hehe yup I'm only 40 minutes drive away door to door from central London. It is stupid but at least I get to hear the elephants trumpet and the lions roar :)
 
dejongj said:
Hehe yup I'm only 40 minutes drive away door to door from central London. It is stupid but at least I get to hear the elephants trumpet and the lions roar :)
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I looked at your profile page :)
It just seems strange that places you would expect to have the best available speeds don't, and a suburb of Edinburgh can get 100Mb
 
I'm on BT FTTC at the moment and get around 25-30Mbs down;

This supports 5 of us - typically 3 x kids who all stream music / video from youTube 24/7 as well as playing on-line games, plus wifey - BBC iPlayer addict and myself Netflix Addict. It's not unusual in evening to have everything going, so by my logic, 25/5 = 5Mbs each, so assuming the latency of the line is similar, you'll have no issues on a 5Mb line.

As for provider, I've been with Demon, Freeserve, Plusnet, BT and probably a couple others - the only relevant one today I'd steer clear of is PlusNet (yes I know it's BT owned), but that's just because they were a bunch of money grabbing buggers when I came to cancel a contract (I'd paid a premium for short term, and bought my own equipment and they still charged me an 'Admin' fee to cancel). Tech support from most of them is awful, but that's only because they insist on walking you through a script that's of no relevance. Lord, when I used to call about setting it up on a Mac many years ago and you'd send them into a spiral of panic.
 
ecoleman said:
Netflix recommends 5mb for HD streaming
https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306

I've recently setup Netflix for my folks, they get around 5.5mb and they stream HD Netflix without issues.

Spotify will work with a connection as slow as 384kb, so 4mb would be plenty.

Ignore everybody telling you 4,5 or 6 mob won't be enough. It's plenty unless you are a power user.
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I'm pretty sure the "m" you keep using should be an "M"... In this context, the case is extremely important.
 
kendo1 said:
I looked at your profile page :)
It just seems strange that places you would expect to have the best available speeds don't, and a suburb of Edinburgh can get 100Mb
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Indeed, but then again it is very beautiful where I am (y) and if I am not mistaken our exchange only got something like 237 connections thus economically not the most viable of upgrades to perform I guess. We don't have mobile phone signal either, thus I also run our mobile phones via a local femtocell across our broadband.
 
One good thing about BT is the free WFfi outdoors via Openzone etc
 
Mine's free at present :) but landline £16.40 ish

16mb download but only 1mb upload, I average 200gb a month on the download side, only really affects me when uploading 200 Plus to flickr.

Oh its Sky and its on copper
 
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Serendipitous Sid said:
You're going to love this, Neil ...

No smart devices, no TV sets to put boxes on top of, no nothing - just one PC and one laptop, both of which are rarely used at the same time. Also most folk this side of the exchange (never mind the cabinet!) are on fibre. Literally all we need the internets for is email, web surfing, Spotify, internet radio and streaming vid in SD from YouTube, news sites etc.

Despite which, I'm now doubtful about going back to copper ...
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4mb sounds a bit on the slow side to me.

I have had 6 to 9mb for a year or two now with no ill effects, except STV catchup which was totally chronic ( all the other catch ups were fine, strangely enough?).
 
Well, in the end we decided to stick with fibre but still save ourselves £150 over 18 months by switching to Plusnet.

Last straw for me with BT was finally finding out that the caller display which we'd been paying the buggers £1.85 a month for (or thereabouts) should have been free for the last two years and "I'm afraid we can't offer you a refund ..."
 
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Mods please delete. Post duplicated itself when I switched Adblock off on this page in order to get it to upload my post ...
 
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rjbell said:
I wouldn't go with talk talk or plusnet after witnessing there service with my mother in law, and father.

I would only ever consider virgin or BT.
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Yes I'm afraid their customer service isn't the best, in fact it's probably the worst!
 
rjbell said:
I wouldn't go with talk talk or plusnet after witnessing there service with my mother in law, and father.
I would only ever consider virgin or BT.
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Plusnet used to be fantastic. Then they were taken over by BT. They're still good wrt customer service and responses on their forum.

Serendipitous Sid said:
And to decide that, it all hinges on one issue. Is 4Mbs enough to avoid buffering on Spotify, internet radio, and standard-def streaming video (YouTube, news sites etc)?
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When I switched from Orange/EE (who wanted to start charging line rental for the free broadband we'd got with the mobile phone offer), I went to plusnet. Our download speed went from 2 meg to 6meg which was better for streaming but I still had buffering issues on youtube and netflix.
 
onomatopoeia said:
There is always an alternative, just depends how much you are prepared to pay ;)
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I could get a leased line in and have be ground dug up. We've looked into satellite and that is not an option as the return channel is still compromised. And over ground microwave systems are not supported by the terrain either. ive even engaged on a private initiative to invest in it myself with support of the rural communities grant, but even that is not supported in our area. The main problem is the ownership of the exhange and when the work is planned to be done. The local loop isn't even unbundled. Until such time the alternative truly isn't viable.

Heck it was easier in the early eighties to lay our own cable across the ocean floor ;)
 
dejongj said:
I could get a leased line in and have be ground dug up.
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I looked into it and it was about £400/month for a 10Mbit uncontended symmetric line where I live, which is likely to be the second most viable option, but it's probably easier and cheaper to sell your house and buy another in an area with better consumer broadband availability.

When I moved five years ago, distance to the exchange was a major consideration in choosing which properties to view. I simply discounted anything more than two miles.
 
Happy Plusnet ADSL user here. I moved when I found out (via News not company) that Tesco (my previous supplier) had been sold to Talk Talk (shudder).
I've had broadband (ADSL) since the days of Demon (who actually offered support for Window NT when other suppliers wouldn't).
My advice is just get the cheapest service you can for what you really need. I have gone from 200k to 2Mb to 12Mb download speeds at a cheaper cost per month than when I started. It's all down to the marketing department (bless them) and a little research on what the maximum theoretical speed for your line is.
 
I was with AOL for donkeys years back in the day.then went over to Virgin i felt the need for speed,it rattles along around 160 mbs download it does everything all over the house never have any trouble with Virgin windows 10 came down like the Flying Scotsman on steroids I could not go back to the Stone Age. We have a place in the lakes were we have to wait for the wind in the right direction to get a signal for the phone and tinternet what's that we adore that too.
 
Hoof said:
I was with AOL for donkeys years back in the day.then went over to Virgin i felt the need for speed,it rattles along around 160 mbs download it does everything all over the house never have any trouble with Virgin windows 10 came down like the Flying Scotsman on steroids I could not go back to the Stone Age. We have a place in the lakes were we have to wait for the wind in the right direction to get a signal for the phone and tinternet what's that we adore that too.
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Its all my Fault Extolling the virtues of Virgin its been off all Day:D:mad:
 
mbscad said:
Happy Plusnet ADSL user here. I moved when I found out (via News not company) that Tesco (my previous supplier) had been sold to Talk Talk (shudder).
I've had broadband (ADSL) since the days of Demon (who actually offered support for Window NT when other suppliers wouldn't).
My advice is just get the cheapest service you can for what you really need. I have gone from 200k to 2Mb to 12Mb download speeds at a cheaper cost per month than when I started. It's all down to the marketing department (bless them) and a little research on what the maximum theoretical speed for your line is.
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My bold, agree 100%
ADSL have been with sky, talktalk, plusnet, BT and now on fibre have been with Plusnet and now BT. Fibre is goodf if a few are sharing the line or downlloading but if browsing virtually the same as ADSL. I just sign up for the 12 or 18 months with whoever is offering the best deal at the time. Believe most issues with broadband are due to local issues with line or contention, luckily have not had many issues yet so all the suppliers seem much the same to me.
 
Nod said:
I'm pretty sure the "m" you keep using should be an "M"...
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m= mega bit
M= mega byte

Broadband speed is measured in mega bits so "m" is correct.
 
I'd stick with a FTTC connection and find yourself a "light use" tariff that restricts your monthly bandwidth instead of the throughput speed, if there are any left.
 
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