What's 'fast enough'?

[kellys_eye]

After what seems a lifetime (certainly 14 years I know of) our property is about to go fibre-to-the home.

We started out with 2Mb (copper) and lived with that for over 12 years and that included running a business but we managed. A recent mobile phone mast fitment in our village gave us ~50Mb (variable with the weather) which has allowed us to stream as much as we want/need.

Now, due to Government (taxpayer) investment they've eventually got around to delivering a fibre connection and the guys fitting it are talking 200Mb/s or even 1Gb/s - apparently it depends on how much the customer is prepared to pay, natch.

I'm asking myself "what do I do with this (potential) download speed"? We rarely stream content, neither do we play online games. Most of our day-to-day stuff a vanilla internet browsing, forums etc. So the question has to be.....

What COULD I use such a speedy connection for? I'm looking for reasons to justify even getting the fibre connected (price may be the final decider) as the current 'phone' broadband has always seemed sufficient. Are there even services in the pipeline headed our way that might give me a good reason to upgrade? Seems to me that speed isn't everything - what do you consider 'fast enough'?

 

[crutschow]

Are there even services in the pipeline headed our way that might give me a good reason to upgrade? Seems to me that speed isn't everything - what do you consider 'fast enough'?

If the connection is fast enough for streaming video, than I can think of nothing that would require a higher bandwidth, unless perhaps 4k streaming if you ever want that.
So I see no reason to change otherwise, especially if the cost is higher.

 

[Delta Prime]

I'm a DIY kind of guy. I have installed coax cable & ethernet cat5e years ago. Not in preparation for fiber but for my own electronic equipment, meters & whatnots. For me it all boils down to my needs and preferences . The 802.11.(alphabet soup) Wi-Fi, 2.4 gig, 5 gig dual band spectrum is congested in my area. I have to go to tri-band router which is an extra band in the 5 gig, it allows me to stream 4K video, & uninterrupted connectivity for my smart appliances and security system throughout my wireless mesh network in the home. That was before this advertisement about increasing the value of your home, that's their hook.
Quite frankly in 10 years this will all be obsolete but that's a different thread.

 

[Delta Prime]

So I see no reason to change otherwise

Respectfully,Hello Sensei!

 

[Externet]

Internet providers are there to profit, not to give you a service. If you are not satisfied on performance, upgrade only in small steps to achieve your needs.
Better eliminating bottlenecks first, like the WiFi that nobody can live without now. (There we go to please the comfort !) I do wired ethernet and can watch european TV on my wimpy 30Mbps service for $18/month.

 

[Kiwi]

The government here in New Zealand has installed nationwide fibre. Installation was free to the homeowner.

We were originally on a 100/20Mbps fibre plan that was fast enough for us.
Our provider then gave us a free upgrade to 1Gbps(950/500Mbps).

We can easily have three different YouTube HD videos streaming at the same time without any buffering.
I have installed Cat6 cables to the TV's etc
Our cost is NZ$25/week including an ASUS AX3000 WiFi6 router. (USD16/AUD23/Euro15.)

You need to assess your requirements and the price to determine what best suits you.
Probably start with the slower/cheaper option and upgrade if you find it doesn't fit.

 

[kellys_eye]

We can easily have three different YouTube HD videos streaming at the same time without any buffering.

If that's split between three users then fair enough but we're a 2-person household and only one of us is 'hardcore' (a variable definition based on age....) surfer. I suppose if 8k TV became popular or something like Hi-res VR tourism we might need the 50Mb we currently have! but I've been reading about the 'new internet' (version 3) that's supposed to give us back our control over our own content etc which I consider a 'proper' improvement on things.

Speed for the pure sake of it doesn't make much sense. It's pretty much the same as people buying the latest (read expensive) hardware just to surf the web which they could do with a 386 processor and VGA; not really but you get my drift - people almost NEVER take full advantage of the hardware they own.

The same applies to download speed. I bet there's far less than 0.1% of users that ever actually need their full b/w allocation and this is probably a good thing as if we ALL managed 100Mb/s I very much doubt the system as a whole would cope.

As far as paying for a service is concerned I'd much rather be billed on a data consumption basis that have to pay a fixed fee for a service you can't (or won't) fully exploit. ISP's are pretty good at selling you speeds of 'UP TO' xxxMb/s but are far from happy if you suggest you PAY 'up to' for the services you actually use!

We're being conned into - and not for the first time - upgrades we don't need. I'm happy to pay for a super-fast service but I want to be able to justify it and would actually USE it if there was something out there that fitted the purpose. Currently I can think of nothing whatsoever that I would want (or even know exists) that requires 'infinite' download speeds. Do you?

 

[kellys_eye]

Internet providers are there to profit, not to give you a service.

I'm almost like <shouting out> "SELL ME SOMETHING!" The fact that such speeds are available leads me to think (probably wrongly) that there's something 'out there' that I'm missing!

 

[Bluejets]

These so-called fantastic speeds are normally applicable only in captial cities or in very new development areas.
As noted, downloading a movie in 3 seconds as one polly quoted a couple of years ago with reference to the NBN.
I roughed it out to 3 days here and we are not what you would call a "remote" area.
To my mind it's "how fast can you type"....???
Other than that a few of those excessive speed development costs would be better spent fixing the constant drop outs on the phone lines now we are NBN fantastic.
On any given day, a local call may last 2 to 3 minutes before it "drops out" and needs to be called back.
So much so, that now it's just accepted and when the call back occurs, the first words uttered are " f"n NBN".
Complaints about the system seem to get chucked in the "too hard basket" and "lets get on with more important things" like those currently floating around.

 

[dragon]

the guys that need the low latency internet are the gamers, but they can make games use alot less bandwidth if they want, not like utube with forced redownloading of videos every time u watch em again.

 

[davenn]

not like utube with forced redownloading of videos every time u watch em again.

??

if it's a movie or doco etc, I download it to my PC and watch it any time I like without having to go to YT again

I never have to "redownload it again" unless I loose the one I originally downloaded ... HDD failure etc