Broadband FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Broadband

⚡️ Speed

You can take our broadband speed test to find out how fast your internet is.

“Good” broadband depends on what you’re after.

If you use your internet intensively – for streaming and gaming, for example – higher speed plans with no usage cap will probably be good for you. If you want your internet for less complicated tasks like checking the news, then lower speed deals could work well.

That depends on what you use the internet for and how many devices are in your household.

Here’s a rough idea of what certain speeds do:

25Mbps – one to two person household with up to five devices. You could stream one high quality TV show if there are no other internet connections
50Mbps – two to four person household with up to seven devices. You could watch two or three video streams alongside other online activities
100Mbps – four to six person household with up to 10 devices. This would suit most families
200Mbps+ – got a large family or have a serious gamer in your household? This speed should allow everyone to watch different things at the same time or use the internet while someone else is online gaming.

If you’re not sure what your usage is, contact your current provider and ask.

When providers say “average speed”, it means the download speed that at least 50% of its customers achieved during peak hours (from 8pm until 10pm for residents and 12pm until 2pm for businesses).

There are three main categories of internet user:

  • Light – a one person household that uses the internet to check the news, emails, social media and for online banking
  • Medium – a two or three person household that does the above, plus occasionally streaming TV shows or films and shopping online
  • Heavy – a household with four or more people, who do everything light and medium users do, as well as stream high quality films, TV shows or music, game online and often have video calls

🤝 About the deals

It could be because of the filters you’ve selected – there might be no broadband options in your area for what you’ve chosen, so try removing a few filters to get more results.

You might be able to choose from broadband and phone, broadband, TV and phone or broadband only deals, depending on your area and the availability there.

That depends on your area – you don’t need a phone for fibre broadband. If there are no fibre optic cables where you live, you’ll need to connect to the internet using a phone line (this is called ADSL broadband).

We might be showing only landline deals to you because if your area doesn’t have fibre optic cables installed, you’ll need ADSL broadband, which uses a phone line to connect to the internet.

🔎 Jargon-buster

Broadband speed is measured in megabits per second (Mbps) – ‘mega’ as in ‘million’, and ‘bits’ meaning ‘bits of data’.

broadband speed test calculates how many bits of data your device can download per second.

So for example, your device might be able to download 30 million bits of data per second, which would be shown as 30Mbps. Put in context, a good quality photo is about 2 million bits (2Mb), so based on an internet speed of 30Mbps, you could download 15 photos in one second.

FTTC is where the high speed fibre optic cable runs from the distribution point to the local street cabinet, then a copper cable runs from the street cabinet to your home.

FTTP has fibre optic cables that run from the distribution point, to your local street cabinet and also all the way into your home, which makes it the pricier and less widely available type of fibre broadband.

A usage cap is the maximum amount you can use the internet – it’s not a limit on your internet speed.

Usage caps are usually measured in Gb (gigabits) or Mb (megabits). So a broadband package might offer a download limit of 100Gb per month. For context, watching a two hour high quality film would use around 4Gb of data.

ADSL stands for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. It’s a type of broadband connection that uses the copper phone lines owned by Openreach.

It’s a common type of broadband, but ADSL requires you to pay to rent a phone line from Openreach.

Fibre is another type of broadband connection that uses Fibre Optic cables. These lines can transport much more information at once, which means faster internet speeds than ADSL.

There are two types of fibre broadband – fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) and fibre to the premises (FTTP). It’s only available to you if the cables exist in your area (FTTC will be in most cases).

🔁 Switching

You might be able to switch broadband deals now, depending on your circumstances.

If your current deal is close to ending or you’re already out of contract, it’s worth comparing broadband to see if you could find a better option.

Not yet, Look After My Bills doesn’t currently automatically switch your broadband deal when the contract ends.

Found your answer? Check if you can save on your broadband 👇

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