Is Internet speed now oversold?

martin363

martin363

martin363

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18 Jan 2012
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997
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Peloponnese, Greece
I appreciate that this is a computer forum, and by it's nature the average internet user on here, is not necessarily your 'average UK User'. I say this because perhaps the majority of this forum are excluded from the next statement.

It has seemed to me for a while, that the majority of the average domestic UK population is being sold more internet than they need, perhaps because the don't know what they need, and 'faster must be better', but none the less, at these times of financial challenge, do most people really need anything faster than perhaps 50-73Mbps download and 20Mbps upload?

I also contend that most 'average' UK domestic customers don't even consider upload speeds, as most advertising I see seems to focus on downloads.

I read a lot on here about 1gbps, or 750Mbps downloads etc, and Virgin perhaps introducing 2.5Gbps next year, but who honestly, other than the top 0.01% of UK domestic users actually needs that speed? Of course if the ISP's and service providers can sell more, and upsell the general population to faster speeds they will, but should they, when most people likely don't need these speeds, or ever get close to using the potential capacity.

That said, looking online, and from my own purchasing experience, Virgin, BT, Talk Talk etc all seem desperate to convince Joe Public that they 'need' 250Mbps or 500Mbps, or even 1Gbps as an internet connection to their home

I have 73/18Mbps in the UK with BT and am very happy with that, I stream, often on 2 or 4 devices in 4k at the same time, and have a NAS mirroring to an external solution in Greece, all with no issues, buffering or delays. I have a YouTube Channel, and upload, again without issues, regularly a 2GB file no issues, and that probably elevates me above the average, so to speak.

I am lucky enough to have a second connection in Greece 50/6Mbps, and even that is fine, though I fine the uploads speeds a little slow (at times) for reasons above.

Should ISP's be forced to explain what people actually need? is it morally right to sell people significantly more than is required, all for the benefits of marketing and bottom line profits?

I see some parallels with the current GPU market, though I suspect a far greater proportion of GPU purchasers understand what they are buying, and whether they need it, or if it is for bragging rights - which is also fine.
 
You're not wrong, I know plenty of people who have been talked into 500mbps or 1gb connections by Virgin when all they need is to log on with their phones and stream off a Fire Stick.
I've got family members where they haven't even got smartphones and all they do is browse on a PC.
For me I like my 350mbps but it only got that high because they kept adding to it for free and I have 6x WiFi cameras around the house plus other stuff I get up to.
Very soon I'm going on 1gb but only because a new company and they're charging me £20 a month but I don't need that speed.
 
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About 7 years ago I upgraded to 300mbps with VM in my old home (this was the fastest at the time, wound up downgrading it to 100mbps as we just didn’t use it.

For the last 18 months (new house move) I have been stuck with 25-30 down and 5 up. This was painful and struggled if me and my wife where both WFH.

Fast forward to two weeks ago and I have just had a 1gig symmetric FTTP installed.

The only reason I went for this was it was actually cheeper than all there other packages (except the 150 mbps package but only by a small margin).
 
The only moral requirement is to be accurate when describing the speeds that are offered, and then for the service to perform at that level. It's not the job of a company selling a product to ensure a customer isn't purchasing more than they "need", and in the case of broadband services there's a 14-day cooling off period giving people an opportunity to have buyer's remorse and to back out.

Being able to sell faster speeds is driving the adoption of FTTP and ensuring the companies doing that deployment can afford to keep going. If people want to spend £55 a month on 1Gbps broadband that they very rarely use the full capacity of, ensuring that a £30 100Mbps plan can exist then that's ultimately a good thing.

I would also be careful with taking your own experiences and requirements and assuming that you represent some sort of majority user. Sure, you might be happy with 73/18, but what if that was 36/8? Would you be fine with that? The only way to fix it is with FTTP, which then brings with it higher headline speeds that different providers can use to make various claims of being the fastest. I spent most of last week using a cloud virtual machine to move 700GB of files around because doing that work on my FTTC service would have been unviable. This cost my employer £300 for use of the VM for the month that this work is going to be taking place for, when the alternative would be something like a £40 Lit Fibre symmetric gigabit service if it were available to my house.
 
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Caged said:
The only moral requirement is to be accurate when describing the speeds that are offered, and then for the service to perform at that level. It's not the job of a company selling a product to ensure a customer isn't purchasing more than they "need", and in the case of broadband services there's a 14-day cooling off period giving people an opportunity to have buyer's remorse and to back out.
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But most ISP’s marketing around FTTP and ultra fast connections is a bit tenuous. They talk about watching 4K and using zoom.

This can be achieved on a relatively modest connections.

1 gig connection is for download and uploading large files. Most use cases this isn’t required.

Edit:

However I completely agree that most homes should have the capacity to go that fast because A) consumer choices B) some people actually need these speeds
 
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Caged said:
The only moral requirement is to be accurate when describing the speeds that are offered, and then for the service to perform at that level. It's not the job of a company selling a product to ensure a customer isn't purchasing more than they "need", and in the case of broadband services there's a 14-day cooling off period giving people an opportunity to have buyer's remorse and to back out.

Being able to sell faster speeds is driving the adoption of FTTP and ensuring the companies doing that deployment can afford to keep going. If people want to spend £55 a month on 1Gbps broadband that they very rarely use the full capacity of, ensuring that a £30 100Mbps plan can exist then that's ultimately a good thing.

I would also be careful with taking your own experiences and requirements and assuming that you represent some sort of majority user. Sure, you might be happy with 73/18, but what if that was 36/8? Would you be fine with that? The only way to fix it is with FTTP, which then brings with it higher headline speeds that different providers can use to make various claims of being the fastest. I spent most of last week using a cloud virtual machine to move 700GB of files around because doing that work on my FTTC service would have been unviable. This cost my employer £300 for use of the VM for the month that this work is going to be taking place for, when the alternative would be something like a £40 Lit Fibre symmetric gigabit service if it were available to my house.
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As I said, 50-73. I would not personally be happy with 36, but that was not my original premise.
Likewise, I excluded the majority of contributors to this forum, and specifically referred to 'average UK domestic', not companies, or individuals working on cloud virtual machines with 700GB of data, who are not average, and out of the scope of the specific discussion.

Morality - This is a very over-simplistic approach to morality if you believe your statement, 'moral requirement to be accurate...'? surely a legal requirement... not moral. This is where companies can go wrong, and sometimes individuals. Complying with the law does not make an entity moral. But meeting legal requirements does not (I think) mean that a company taking money from customers has met, or does not need to meet their moral and social responsibilities.

I remember upgrading to 2.5mbps and thinking it was great, but internet is a bit like processors, years ago nothing was adequate, and struggled to run windows, nowadays, for the majority, and I5 or 7600, is more than enough.

I used to live in Vietnam, and there we all had FTTP, 100/100, which was great, until you wished to access a foreign site, outside VN, that was where they charged.... I paid for a guaranteed 3/3 mbps Foreign, though even on that I could stream BBC with the odd hiccup. It was strange to me having to buy foreign! but the local upload speeds were amazing.
 
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I've got a 'mate' who has worked for Utility Warehouse since it started and he sells people internet that is too slow for them but insists it's OK.
So for instance if the customer can only get the 35mbps package where they live he will convince them it will be OK.
Over the years there have been countless posts on Facebook of people venting their frustration at him for their slow broadband, one even grabbed him in a pub and threatened him to sort it.
Of course if they are able to get the 500mbps he will sell that to them when they don't need it.
 
I would even say a good number of users on here with gigabit speeds don't fully saturate their connection 99% of the time. People buy it for the wow factor - downloading your steam game in 5 minutes rather than 20 minutes.
 
I am stuck with bt for another a year and all they provide here is roughly 90 at the moment. I would like a bit more and when my contract finishes I am going to try out virgin cable.
 
SexyGreyFox said:
I've got a 'mate' who has worked for Utility Warehouse since it started and he sells people internet that is too slow for them but insists it's OK.
So for instance if the customer can only get the 35mbps package where they live he will convince them it will be OK.
Over the years there have been countless posts on Facebook of people venting their frustration at him for their slow broadband, one even grabbed him in a pub and threatened him to sort it.
Of course if they are able to get the 500mbps he will sell that to them when they don't need it.
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Most members of Joe public have no clue what speed of a connection they have. I've lost count of the number of customers moving home to an ADSL connection of 5Mbps or less and while they were told the speeds there was no comprehension of how limiting such a connection would be to family life. Calls of slow Internet, Netflix buffering constantly, Tommy's online gaming lagging hard as soon as someone else starts streaming etc. They have no idea at all and all the complaining can't do anything. 'Make it faster' or 'I'd like to upgrade' and there's nothing we can do as Openreach just haven't installed anything faster.
 
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Semple said:
I would even say a good number of users on here with gigabit speeds don't fully saturate their connection 99% of the time. People buy it for the wow factor - downloading your steam game in 5 minutes rather than 20 minutes.
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Most connections aren't saturated anywhere close to a decent amount of the time, an office of 100 people probably averages out to 20Mbps. The point is to have the burst capacity there when you need to download a large file because not everything can just be left overnight. There aren't (yet) any applications that can't be done on a 50Mbps symmetric service that a symmetric gigabit enables, it's just how much you value your waiting time. Seeing what the difference in pricing ends up being on a lot of the FTTP providers it's an easy decision if you work from home.
 
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My choice was simple. I was on 70down/10up with Vodafone for £39 a month and was looking to change. However i wanted faster but didn't want to go back to Virgin as they are awful in this area. I noticed City Fibre digging up the place so held fire and managed to get 980down/980up with TalkTalk FTTP for £36 a month...
 
Personally i found there isn't enough value offerings available. It's always been advertised as faster speeds being the preference to advertisement now. Or at least since FFTC became more common. I've only ever known £20 packages are the lowest available, and that's ranged from ADSL 10/1Mb to 200Mb. I'd maybe drop my current speeds if something cheaper was available on a fixed line.
 
martin363 said:
It has seemed to me for a while, that the majority of the average domestic UK population is being sold more internet than they need, perhaps because the don't know what they need, and 'faster must be better', but none the less, at these times of financial challenge, do most people really need anything faster than perhaps 50-73Mbps download and 20Mbps upload?
Click to expand...

I have a two word answer for you: Windows Update.

No, people don't need mega-bandwidth all the time, but when they need it, they need it.
 
Semple said:
I would even say a good number of users on here with gigabit speeds don't fully saturate their connection 99% of the time. People buy it for the wow factor - downloading your steam game in 5 minutes rather than 20 minutes.
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You said it but didn't see it.

Not waiting a substantial amount of time to recieve (or send) large bits of data like games or other media is a legitimate reason.

Sure 10mb will get there eventually but 1000mb will get it done without having to schedule your day around waiting for it to finish.
 
I'm on 28/1.5 - it's woeful! Used to live in Edinburgh with a VM connection of 380/35 and boy do I miss it.

On the upside they are currently rolling out FTTH in my town and I am going for 300/300 for £29/month - £5 a month more than I currently pay for 28/1.5!

Additionally, the new provider contributes up to £200 to help you get out of your current contract.
 
I sure as hell don’t need such a fast connection but it is nice to be able to download a game at 115MB/sec. Even something like RDR2 at 112GB or so comes down in about 17 minutes.

100-200Mbit would be enough but it’s good to have the speed at hand if I do need or even just want to pull something large down in a hurry.
 
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