The short answer: No! Most customers need to completely update their technology setup to make the most so we recommend a cheaper superfast option instead. Read the full explanation below.

All of the main broadband providers such as Sky, BT, TalkTalk, Vodafone, Plusnet, NOW, EE, Virgin and more are offering multiple levels of broadband superfast connection. The services available range from your lowest connections at around 10Mb/s for a not so cheap approximate £20 a month, right up to a full Gigabits worth of speeds for £50 – £70 a month. What we’d like to know is do you really get those speed levels. 

We all wish our internet connection was much faster and we could download/stream the highest quality movies or games in less than a second. 

It’s said that a 1GB file will download in 13.3 minutes with a 10Mb connection but a 500mb connection will download this in 16 seconds. Personally, I’ve never seen a 1GB file download fast than 30 minutes. 

It should be a simple equation, if the connection is 500Mb/s, then you should be able to download 500Megabytes every second, so a 1GB file should download in 2 seconds. This is not true though. Clever wording and detailed T&Cs often allow companies to side step around the fact that they cannot actually provide the speeds they offer to the customers expectations and this is important for you to understand if you are about to commit to a 18-24 month contract at £50 or £70 a month.

So what do they mean when they say 500Mb a second?

Broadband providers mean that they will deliver these speeds to your property, but there are a number of factors that will slow down your connection. If you call up your engineer, and tell them that the speeds aren’t as advertised they will often be checking from their end and confirm that they can see you are receiving the correct speeds as part of your contract. If not, they will release some connection to you to ensure your connection is running at the agreed speeds. 

When you first sign a new contract for a superfast broadband speed, the connection takes time to settle in and servers to update as well as deliver you the new speeds you have purchased.

What slows down my connection?

You will have many things that are slowing down your connection, some you can control and others you can’t. 

Things you cannot control (easily). You may have a tree or poor weather conditions affecting your connection especially if your internet is delivered above ground like BT. An over grown tree branch pushing your cable around or big gusty wind will disrupt the connection. Old cables, your house may have been wired in the victorian era or 90s, same thing, these old wires may need replacing, this will incur additional costs. Thick brick walls in your house, the wifi signal in your house will be blocked by thick concrete so if your router is in the lounge and your bed room or entertainment room is all the way over the other side of the house and the Wifi has to pass through 4 thick walls, you should expect a worsened service and slow speeds.

Things you can control (easily). This is the interesting part. Connection directly to your router via ethernet connection will dramatically increase your speeds because you are connecting direct to the source. There’s nothing in between you and your connection. Devices can have a big affect, using older devices with outdated hardware can cause you to get slower speeds. Some devices are unable to jump on newer frequencies that allow for faster speeds to be delivered.

Software Updates, yes! those annoying updates that seem to happen every 10 minutes will help to keep a cleaner connection to your wifi and your wireless devices will connect more easily.

Less devices connected to your network at once. You know how we’ve been hearing lately that your electrical appliances use loads of electricity whilst they’re on standby, well this is the same when it comes to your bandwidth and wifi devices. You only have a limited amount of bandwidth and this is divided up amongst all of your devices even when dormant because most devices are never truly dormant, they’re usually updating, backing up, on standby waiting for messages or listening to everything we say.

Let’s test out what we’ve said

We have a superfast connection that should be providing us with the highest speeds, way over 500MB. We won’t say which one, because that may make us look impartial. We decided to use an okay Android phone, a good PC Laptop, a newish iPhone and an old macbook with outdated firmware. The results are as follows: