How much broadband do i need?

“How much broadband do I need?” Sound familiar? Don’t worry. You’re in the right place. First, we’ll break down what Mbps means, and how many you’ll need. Then, we’ll go on to talk about what internet speeds you’ll need when you’re doing different online activities.

• What is Mbps?
• How many Mbps do I need? And is 8Mbps Good?
• So, what’s a good broadband speed for what you need?
• What broadband speed do I need to stream movies?
• What about streaming music? What broadband speed do I need for Spotify, and Apple Music?
• What broadband speed do I need for gaming?
• What about VOIP? What’s the minimum internet speed for video calling?
• How much download speed do I need?
• Do I need to go to superfast broadband speeds?
• What is data and what is data usage?
• What’s the difference between a megabit and a megabyte is data and what is data usage?
• How much internet am I using?
• How much data do I actually need?

What is Mbps?

‘Mbps’ is an abbreviation for Megabits per Second. A Megabit is a unit of measurement for  the speed of data transfer over the internet, or in other words, your internet speed. So let’s put broadband speed into real context.

How many Mbps do I need? And is 8Mbps Good?

8Mbps is equal to approximately 1MB, so it takes around 1 second to download 1MB at 8Mbps. A song, for example, that is 5MB in size, will take around 5 seconds to download at a speed of 8Mbps, but will take  40 seconds if your broadband speed is 1Mbps.

So, what’s a good broadband speed for what you need?

In reality, you’d probably be quite surprised how much you can really do with ‘slower’ speeds, as the broadband speed requirements of most online services are actually quite low.

Will you be using the internet for browsing the web, using your email and social media? This is considered as ‘light use’, so you’ll only need the minimum broadband speed.

What broadband speed do I need to stream movies?

What about streaming music? what broadband speed do I need for Spotify, and Apple Music?

You’d think that music streaming would need a quick speed to function properly. But did you know that you can actually stream music with as little as a 0.5Mbps speed? If you’re a regular music lover, and you would prefer a completely smooth and loss-free listen, it’s recommended a speed of around 2Mbps.

If you’re a Spotify user and you appreciate the best quality audio experience, you’ll need at least 2Mbps. For Apple Music, you should only need less than 1Mbps.

What broadband speed do I need for gaming?

Again, this is another online activity that many people think needs the highest speed they can get. However, things such as latency affect game play much more as it is a ‘real-time’ function.

So satellite internet is not a great option for gamers. If you’re a serious gamer, talk to our customer service team when you order about purchasing a static IP address! Remember that faster speeds mean a better gaming experience.

What about VOIP? What’s the minimum internet speed for video calling?

The minimum internet speed for video calling is as little as 0.5Mbps. But it’s important to remember that latency is a bigger factor as it is a real-time activity. For a clear and interruption-free call, 1.5Mbps is a good speed to have.

So are you regularly using Skype or another video calling programme to catch up with family or friends? Or perhaps, do you require the use of video calling to work from home? If this rings true for you, it could be worth choosing the faster internet speed so that you’re not held back on those conversations by a buffering broadband connection.

How much download speed do I need?

Downloading is a bit different as it directly correlates to speed. So, essentially, the faster the speed, the faster the download. To put it into context, a speed of 5Mbps will download you an album of 10 songs in 1min 20secs, and a speed of 16Mbps will download you the same album in just 25 seconds.

Do I need to go to superfast broadband speeds?

It can be a minefield, we know! There are lots of things to consider, more than just what broadband speeds online services require. In theory it is great that iPlayer only needs 2Mbps to stream. But it’s also important to be realistic.

For example, if you’ve got a household with kids and jam-packed with devices all connected to the internet (think about phones, tablets, computers, smart TVs, smart watches etc. etc.), 2Mbps is not going to cover everything and your iPlayer streaming just won’t work properly.

It’s also worth considering how much your household relies on the internet too. If you and your family are regularly downloading films or large files, are often all dotted about the house streaming tv catch-up services, or playing online games, it is definitely worth spending the extra for both faster speeds and a greater data allowance.

What is data and what is data usage?

In short, everything that you do on the internet uses an amount of data. A good way to look at it is to think of data as currency. If, for example, you have a 10GB data allowance, then you have 10GB of data to ‘spend’.

It’s worth noting that your data allowance is usually given to you in GB (Gigabytes), and can be anything from a 1GB package right up to an unlimited package.

What’s the difference between a megabit and a megabyte?

A Megabit (Mb) is a unit of measurement for the speed of data transfer – or to most of us – your broadband speed, i.e. 15Mbps.

Not to be confused with Megabit, a Megabyte (MB) is another unit of measurement that refers to the amount of data being transferred. This is commonly known as your Data Allowance and as mentioned, is usually provided in Gigabytes (approx. 1000MB = 1GB).

To put both speed and amount into context, 8Mbps is equal to around 1MB. So if you’re downloading a song that’s size is 5MB, it will take 5 seconds to download at a speed of 8Mbps.

How much internet am I using?

Well, it all depends on what you usually get up to online. We’ve put together a table that will give you an idea of how much data is used for some of the most common web activities:

How much data do I actually need?

There’s no way that we can advise you for definite as everyone’s usage varies greatly, however, the below should give you a rough guideline of general usage amounts:

Low Usage: 2-10GB per month

Low Usage would typically encompass basic web browsing and emails. Basic web browsing could be made up of online shopping, banking, social networking and news reading.

If we work off the grid above, a family of two adults and two teenagers who browse the internet for an hour per person per night would use approximately 2.2GB per month in data, and this of course isn’t taking into account weekends, holiday periods, watching TV/Films online, listening to music etc.

Medium Usage: 10-30GB per month

In this instance, Medium Usage would generally include your typical web browsing, but also TV, Music and Film Streaming.

Streaming is dependent on the quality of definition that you choose to stream TV programmes or films in, so for example, if your household streams two 1 hour programmes from BBC iPlayer per week, that could equate to sound 9.5GB of data per month.

High Usage: 30GB – Unlimited per month

High Usage would include the likes of all of the above, plus online gaming and/or film downloading.

The online gaming data use in the grid is an approximation, as games vary greatly in the amount of data that they use, so whilst some games could use 20MB per hour, some games can use anything up to 1GB per hour. So, if a gamer in your household spends on average 3 hours per evening online gaming, that’s around 7.2GB per month (using our estimate).

The downloading of films also sucks up a lot of your data, and let’s be honest, if you’re going to the effort of downloading a film, most of us would choose to download one in High Definition. So, one film in HD per week could use up to 20GB of data per month.

See if you can get superfast broadband today

So, although most people think that a faster broadband speed is always better, but that may not necessarily be the case – it all depends on what you ordinarily use the internet for, after all, no one wants to pay through the nose for an ultrafast connection that they are not even using.

Now you’re more in the loop about what internet speeds you need, you can choose the right broadband package. Alternatively, enter your postcode into our broadband coverage checker to see if we can get to you.