Life with or without fast broadband

Cosimo · 8 Feb 2011 at 17:34

2MB is fine unless you’re are planning to spend your time downloading copious amounts of dodgy media and software.

Monkeynut · 8 Feb 2011 at 17:48

Telescopi said:
Is 2mb enough for iplayer (standard def)? If so I would be fine with it.

Yes, though some nights when I get throttled down a bit it has to drop from 1500kbps to 800kbps streaming to keep playback realtime

B@Th*nG · 8 Feb 2011 at 19:38

Fast broadband you say?

B@

Raumarik · 8 Feb 2011 at 19:41

I was told I'd only get 1meg when I moved house, currently get 7meg and it's perfectly OK. Dont' rely on what they say - BT are constantly rolling out new products and a nicer place to stay is worth far, far more than broadband!

Pawnless Endgame · 8 Feb 2011 at 19:46

I echo those who said that 2 Mbit is fine. My first experience of internet access was in my student digs running off the uni's T1 connection (1.5 Mbit) in 1999. Surprised I was to go back home, buy a 56k modem for the first time and find that it was only a fraction of the speed. So therefore, a T1 at 1.5 Mbit became my benchmark connection. Thankfully I gave up the modem and went NTL on 720 kbit in 2002. Then 2 years later, they upped it to the magical 1.5 Mbit figure for the same price. I'm now on 10 Mbit but the main thing is that I hit the 1.5.

POB · 8 Feb 2011 at 19:51

With a low speed connection make sure you pay extra for a decent provider such as Zen, if you have slow speed then congestion in evenings it will be a lot worse.

OzyOly · 8 Feb 2011 at 19:57

POB said:
With a low speed connection make sure you pay extra for a decent provider such as Zen, if you have slow speed then congestion in evenings it will be a lot worse.

Congestion is crazy on ADSL, gets to 18:00 and I can't stream YouTube anymore.

[TW]Fox · 8 Feb 2011 at 19:57

OzyOly said:
Congestion is crazy on ADSL, gets to 18:00 and I can't stream YouTube anymore.

Whereas I use O2 and it's awesome.

Sin_Chase · 8 Feb 2011 at 20:13

OzyOly said:
Congestion is crazy on ADSL, gets to 18:00 and I can't stream YouTube anymore.

I am un-contended on a 20MBit connection and half the time YouTube wont stream anyway. Some 1080p videos come through at a solid 8,000Kb/sec while some 360p will sit buffering for 10 minutes

2Mbit is hardly bad, you can stream TV with that, and just have to leave it buffer a little for a while if you want to stream HD content.

steve-h · 8 Feb 2011 at 20:18

Do not settle for 2mbit...

starfighter · 8 Feb 2011 at 20:19

So you can't download HD and will maybe have to wait for a few things to load but it will still be fine. You can't have had more than 2mb for longer than a couple of years anyway.

I am a bigger geek than you and I managed on 1mb for a year. Was fine.

Luseac · 8 Feb 2011 at 20:22

I'm still on 1Mbit and it's fine for general browsing and youtube vids.

UncleRuckus · 8 Feb 2011 at 22:20

2megs!?! whipper snappers don't know how good they have it.In my day we had dial-up and we could still play online games!