How Fast Should Your Internet Connection Be?
Thursday
Aug 19, 2010
According to the US FCC, consumers only get about 50% of their subscribed Internet connection speed (PDF report). Yugatech points out that in the Philippines, what matters more is the nominal amount of bandwidth that consumers get. This is because most consumer accounts here are in the 1 to 2 Mbps league. Half of that would be about 512K to 1 Mbps.
Perhaps if you were subscribed to a 10 Mbps account and only got 5 Mbps, that won’t be too noticeable, if all you do is browse the web and send email. However, if you’re fond of downloading media, like music, videos, and the like, then you will surely feel shortchanged. And if your subscribed bandwidth were low enough, to start with, then 50% will surely be something to complain about.
This is why companies advertise their connection speeds as “up to XXX Mbps.” Look at the fine print. Your subscription plan will usually say that quality of service can be affected by congestion, losses in transmission, and the like. Some companies, like Bayan DSL, even advertise their speeds as “burstable,” meaning it’s not a consistent speed, but you can get it during off-peak hours.
It’s even worse when you do get the advertised speed, but the latency is just too much that each item downloads slowly into your browser or software. This is the case with most 3G or even HSDPA connections locally. You do get the advertised speed, but that’s on a per-file basis. You sometimes have to wait for each item to get through the pipes because of the high latency.
Personally, I can say that 90% of my computer use involves web browsing, email, and social networking. The other 10% involves the occasional download of applications and media. And I usually schedule my media download at off-peak hours, when I can just sleep over it and expect the big download to finish when I wake up. Of course, not everyone might have the same habits. You might want your media right here, right now. And so you might want to squeeze out as much as you want from your broadband subscription.
What connection speed are you comfortable with? And do you actually need that much speed at any given time of the day? If you do have a broadband subscription, do you get 100% of the advertised or contract speed?
You can usually check with speedtest.net if your actual throughput is as fast as the claimed speed.
J. Angelo Racoma is a technology journalist and blogger. See more of his blog posts here at racoma.com.ph, commentaries at racoma.net, and Twitter feed at @jangelo.
Comments
Jhay
August 19th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
It’s been one of the thorniest issues about internet subscription. We get less than what we paid for and the whole thing is made worse by lousy customer services.