The more Mbps you have the faster your speed will be to receive this info, and the more devices you can have connected to the network, that will receive a good connection.īut in many occasions, your upload speed is just as important as your download speed.
Download speed is the speed a webpage, video, movie, app upgrade can load/download to your device. The most critical speed for most is download speed and this is the speed advertised, most of the time, from other broadband providers. The bigger the number the faster you’ll go, stream, work and play! Uploads and downloads As a rule, the higher the Mbps the better-quality service you can expect from your broadband. When you’re shopping for broadband, the key thing you need to consider is the speed that is being offered to you. A three-floor house of four teenagers flicking between YouTube videos and online homework, at the same time, is going to need a much faster internet connection than an apartment that’s lived in by a single adult or a working couple who are out all day. (No, we never quite understood what they meant by that one either).īecause of this, you’ll need to consider the number of people who are online in your home. That’s why the internet might be slow if you’re at a public conference in the future, at home when kids get back from school (also in the future) and put on CBeebies, Netflix or Zoom family for example, or why work computer systems can slow down when someone is doing something vague like “running a big quote”. Having multiple users on the internet in the same place at the same time can also affect speed. For a more detailed explanation on the big and not-so-big differences between copper cables and Fibre optic cables check out What is broadband.
Don’t be fooled, this is not Full Fibre as you are still transmitting data over copper wire and fighting with your neighbours for that precious bandwidth. This setup means many providers claim you are getting fibre but it’s actually called FTTC or Fibre To The Cabinet. The cabinet is then connected by fibre optic cables to the main national broadband infrastructure. In many situations, your service is carried on a combination of copper installation leading from a cabinet (those green/black boxes you see on the end of a street).
Simply put, if your location has fibre optic cable installed, your broadband speed should be fabulously fast, if you still use copper cables then you’ll struggle to get good broadband speed. The speed of local broadband always depends on whether outdated copper cables in the area have been replaced with highly reliable fibre optic cables or not. Broadband speed is measured by megabits and kilobits per second (Mbps / Kbps) data download/upload and the bigger the number of Mbps the faster you’ll go and the more you can achieve online.īroadband speed varies across the country, with some small cities and towns having faster and more reliable connections than big cities or rural areas, and vice versa. Unlike old school dial-up, broadband is a permanent connection that runs continually in the background of our homes and lives whether we’re using it or not (although let’s be honest – we usually are).
It’s the natural progression from dial-up, which saw us dial into the “worldwide web” every time we needed to use it to update our MySpace page, download the latest Britney Spears track on Netscape, check for new MSN connections or build a new garage for our Sim families. First up, a basic, what is broadband and broadband speed?īroadband is the ‘high-speed’ internet connection most used for the past 15 – 20 years in the UK. What’s a good download speed in the UK?Īnd many more.
What’s the best broadband for 4K streaming?.What’s the average broadband speed in the UK?.In this article, we will answer some of the questions that we get asked most, including: So, here’s the need-to-know on broadband so you can make the right choice about your internet provider. When the answer to every question we might ever need is at the tap of our fingertips and streaming is the main way we now consume our entertainment, the flashing light that signifies a shaky connection is a recipe for disaster (or infuriation).
In the 21st Century, fast and reliable access to the internet is a basic human right. Zzoomm gives you more speed, more choice and more freedom with your broadband. After all, you don’t want to sign up for a new service and find that Netflix is buffering. If you’re looking for a new internet service or just want to upgrade your sluggish broadband speed, we want you to be sure you know what you’re looking for.