Benefits of faster broadband.

What difference has getting faster broadband made to your life, and how long did it take you to adapt?

Considering 90% of my internet usage is web browsing, not a great deal. Obviously going from 2mbps to 8mbps at present things load quicker, but not bothered with Fibre as i wouldnt see the benefits compared to the extra cost

For work, we have 72mbit with the cabinet just around the corner, it's essential for us as we're always transferring massive files (images/videos - had to download 30gb of data the other day) and have staff working remotely.

For home, I had around 25mbit wireless connection (VFast), and never really felt like I needed more bandwidth. As long as I can watch YouTube in HD, perhaps do some streaming, download a few things relatively quickly I'm happy.

I've just moved house and have the option of 2.5mbit DSL connection, with fibre coming soon although I am around 1.5km from the cabinet... Really, I'd be happy with a 20mbit stable connection.

Mostly TV!
Instead of only one person in the house using iPlayer or similar, now 4 people can stream at the same time. Our Smart TVs are used a lot more on the internet.

My move to FTTC has only seen a modest speed increase unfortunately.
My rural line has gone from an IP Profile of 5Mbps to just under 20.
Initially I saw 30Mbps but as others got connected my speed reduced. My current speed is fine - just hope it doesn't drop anymore!

As for "how long to adapt". Not sure what you are after but I guess straight away

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

What difference has getting faster broadband made to your life, and how long did it take you to adapt?

about 2 minutes to adapt went from 6mbps to 160mbps - currenty have 160/12 and 76.19.9 bonded together. also have a works LLU line which I will also be coverting to Fibre soon. I can run 4.

In terms of usage. Nothing dodgy. But my children love their videos and games. PS3 game being 60GB means it can download pretty much over tea as here 1GB can be gotten in around 35 seconds.

I can brag about how fast my connection is now whereas at 3Mbps on a long ADSL line I couldn't

Seriously though, it makes large downloads for software updates and installations a pleasure.

Another benefit of moving from ADSL to FTTC is that I previously had a bandwidth cap and now don't. That means I don't need to worry about downloading television programmes and films. That's something I rarely did when I had ADSL.

I'm pretty used to fast broadband having worked for an ISP so there wasn't any adaptation required - it just put things back to normal.

Watching YouTube and BBC iPlayer without them stalling is nice. Apart from that, no difference. I didn't really notice when my speed dropped from 14Mbps to 8Mbps recently.

In my household it means my two teenagers can be doing whatever they want web-wise (my daughter is surgically attached to her i-pad, streaming constantly) and I can do whatever I fancy at the same time.

As with several other replies, I had no real need to go on to FTTC/VDSL; but decided to do so, on the assumption that the demand would be high.

My ADSL2x connection generally achieved 17/.9 Mbps.

Even my Dial-up was good at normally 44 Kbps, occasionally achieving 52 Kbps.


The local PCP handles about 300 Subscribers, based on Postcode coverage.


The linked FTTC has a back-plane for 288/300 VDSL connections.

When first activated, sufficient links/filters for 48/50 upgrades were actually set up, March 2014.


The next 48/50 were added about 5 weeks back, so at most there had been only 48 upgrades in that first operational year, say about 16% absolute maximum.


There has been some more activity at the PCP about 1 week back, with an OR vehicle parked by it for about an hour, compared with the 5 to 10 minutes for a single upgrade.

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The FTTC Back plane has strictly 300 sockets, in 2 Columns, each containing 6 segments of 5 rows by 5 columns.

The lowest row of each segment is coloured differently, whilst the the right-most socket in that row is generally unused at any time apparently.

Hence my 288/300 and similar.

Edited by deleted (Wed 29-Apr-15 19:21:17)

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

What difference has getting faster broadband made to your life, and how long did it take you to adapt?

Very little, really. I don't download a great deal and my previous connection (12Mb/s) was fast enough for my occasional iPlayer use. My line is a bit more stable now and gives me 74Mb/s (jumped up from 64Mb/s last week when G.INP was rolled out) but not hugely so. I've gone from one or two drops a month to one or two drops a year. Frankly the main reason I changed was because I could.

Edited by Andrue (Thu 30-Apr-15 10:25:56)