In reply to a post by Snake:

I think price does play an important part in making the decision. However as someone else posted here, its also got to do with how much you will use it (i.e work etc..).

In my case I work completely from home in my current role. However even if I wasn't I want the fastest, most stable speed I can get for what I think is a fair price. Now what I believe is a fair price someone else may not.

Ditto. My cable is a business service because I'm also a remote worker. I have to download debug files some of which are small, some multiple GB. Every minute I'm waiting for that core file to download is a minute longer to triage potentially massive customer issues.

Entire enterprises can be brought to a near-halt by failure of our software. Every minute delay is costly.

I keep a second broadband service over a diverse network for resilience too.

Why do I want faster speeds? Simple really. Stuff comes down the wires faster. I don't fear huge downloads any more. I get up at 5am and have about 20mins on the internet. Next log in is at about 7pm when we get back home. I then have a 2 hour window to get things done, watch streaming TV etc. Stuttering etc isn't an option.

I used to have a 1.2Mb/s ADSL connection with a 10Gb cap. I now have just under 70mb/s fibre, unlimited. Value for money? Certainly. I used to pay about £28 (BT) for that ADSL connection (Market A exchange). I used to think of it as very poor value. Yes, it is now costing me another £16 extra a month. But the difference is a total game changer. Before it was' Oi, you're using all the bandwidth'. Pages would stagger into view, downloads would take forever. Sometimes it would all just fade away. i.e we'd get disconnected etc for taking too long.

Now, sometimes the pages load so fast I don't even notice that they have already changed, especially if the page layout/format is the same. What I used to think as huge downloads, come down very quick. Netflix is watched more often that not. Even streaming 4K to several devices isn't an issue in this family any more. Smooth as silk! Well done Plusnet.

Only downside is I wish it was full fibre. DLM keeps knocking me down about 6mb/s and then slowly relents to put me back where I was before - I'm assuming on full fibre DLM doesn't get so involved(?). Surprisingly, the loss of that 6mb is slightly noticeable.

Why wouldn't you want high speeds? Unlimited too? Even more so if it results in paying about the same amount of money!

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

This is one that's asked from time to time. My response would simply be this picture, and to invite you to think about how long it would take your good self on your service to acquire this one game via digital distribution.

https://s18.postimg.org/o6ipwjzix/Voom_Steam.png

Who would have thought, 10 years back, that one of the biggest edge cases in access speed was going to become ... downloading games.

IMO, there are three real drivers for the government's current stance:

- Individual MPs are sick of getting it in the neck about broadband speed
- The government are embarrassed that the UK doesn't appear on the FTTH council graphs
- The most pro-competition MPs see this as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get more physical infrastructure in opposition to Openreach

They no longer make arguments about any particular need for speed.

In reply to a post by 69bertie:

Why do I want faster speeds? Simple really. Stuff comes down the wires faster. I don't fear huge downloads any more.

I get that and if you get poor ADSL speeds then its a no brainier to move to fibre the point of my OP was how many are paying for fibre because they thought the would notice huge increase in speed, most of us do not upload/download huge files like Business users and gamers do so basically the big draw was the numbers advertised 4x - 8x faster than ADSL etc, its a bit like the saying 90% of all smart phone users only use 10% of the phones features yet will buy the next model out because they have to have the latest phone i wonder how many people are paying extra for something they really do not (at the moment) need.

I am currently on the Faster Fibre up to 38Mb package have noticed web pages load a bit faster and uploading pictures to hosting sites is a lot faster so for me i am getting value for money would i move to Faster Fibre up to 76Mb at the moment no as i do not need the extra speed.

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Edited by deleted (Sun 12-Nov-17 18:23:27)

Actually, this reminded me...

I recall a presentation from someone in BT whose job was to estimate bandwidth demands. His conclusion for 2025 broke down to 50Mbps for "most people, most days, some of the time", but there was a portion with bigger demands: 500Mbps for "some people, some days, some of the time".
Video: https://youtu.be/Aoybc0RxiT8
PDF: http://www.bcssouthwest.org.uk/presentations/DougWil...

The former figure was dominated by sustained demand from streaming applications. The latter figure was dominated by infrequent "elastic" demand - for things like game downloads, or iOS downloads.

I guess the "demand from millions" is going to come from the subgroup that decide they don't have the patience to wait for games to download...

In reply to a post by Chippy_Tea_:

most of us do not upload/download huge files (Business users and games etc)

Actually, most business users don't download that much either. There are certainly some segments that rely heavily on bandwidth, but not many.

For a lot of businesses, the outcome is the same as you describe for yourself: decent superfast speed is enough

This is basically how capacity planning is done on access links. The 'standard' formula now is to size the link around average sustained usage + a single user's maximum burst + a little headroom.

The cohort on the links isn't large enough to smooth out the spikes via statistical contention so a fair amount of bandwidth has to be sat idle most of the time to allow users to hit their maximum speeds.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Who would have thought, 10 years back, that one of the biggest edge cases in access speed was going to become ... downloading games.

The prudish would prefer this to the older edge case: downloading pornography

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

This is one that's asked from time to time. My response would simply be this picture, and to invite you to think about how long it would take your good self on your service to acquire this one game via digital distribution.

https://s18.postimg.org/o6ipwjzix/Voom_Steam.png

Who would have thought, 10 years back, that one of the biggest edge cases in access speed was going to become ... downloading games.

Indeed! I've just got an Xbox One X. Some of the 4k texture packs for the games are 60Gb+ (on top of the game which is already about 40Gb)!!