Why this passion for speed?

I have just switched to BT Infinity - now getting 37 instead of 7Mbs. This is fine but there's not a lot of difference, the most important for me is uploading speed. Where formally it could take 2+ hrs to upload a 10 min YouTube, it's now clear in say 12 mins. I heard a politician this week say "everyone should have 100Mbs." Why? Sorry but I don't see it at all. I'd have been quite happy for 90% of my work to have stuck on 7Mbs. Some sites still buffer - but presumably that's their fault not BTs.
Please tell me where I'm mistaken.

In reply to a post by MissMoppet:

I have just switched to BT Infinity - now getting 37 instead of 7Mbs. This is fine but there's not a lot of difference, the most important for me is uploading speed. Where formally it could take 2+ hrs to upload a 10 min YouTube, it's now clear in say 12 mins. I heard a politician this week say "everyone should have 100Mbs." Why? Sorry but I don't see it at all. I'd have been quite happy for 90% of my work to have stuck on 7Mbs. Some sites still buffer - but presumably that's their fault not BTs.
Please tell me where I'm mistaken.

I agree to an extent, but it depends how you use your connection. I run a Owncloud server, as well as backup and syncing services so upload and download speed are both important to me.

I think you're right saying that upload speed is probably overlooked a lot.

Well with a family of 5 i'd take all the speed that was offered to me, currently at 6mbps so doesn't run to good when 3 people are running netflix. and with all this 4k tech coming along we'll need it

In reply to a post by MissMoppet:

Please tell me where I'm mistaken.

You've answered your own question

Where formally it could take 2+ hrs to upload a 10 min YouTube, it's now clear in say 12 mins.

When you do photo and video production work.. then speed is really useful.

I have moved and finally after a long delay waiting for line and FTTC to be installed, I have some connectivity. Previously had a 150Mbps connection (12 up) and now only (apologies to those who can't get these speeds) 28/5.5 Not rural just 1.2km to the PCP.

That said due to some video work I was doing combining both uploaded and downloads for a 8 hour period yesterday racked up about 80GB worth of data movements. I wish I could have had a 80/20 line (or as I am hoping at some point 330/30) as it would have saved a lot of waiting.

As you suggest though some people won't notice perhaps or care either way but there are a growing number of people who have a thirst for more speed.

I also wish I could increase my upload speed..

In reply to a post by MissMoppet:

I have just switched to BT Infinity - now getting 37 instead of 7Mbs. This is fine but there's not a lot of difference, the most important for me is uploading speed. Where formally it could take 2+ hrs to upload a 10 min YouTube, it's now clear in say 12 mins. I heard a politician this week say "everyone should have 100Mbs." Why? Sorry but I don't see it at all. I'd have been quite happy for 90% of my work to have stuck on 7Mbs. Some sites still buffer - but presumably that's their fault not BTs.
Please tell me where I'm mistaken.

There is a bit of an obsession with speed when really two related factors should be discussed: Bandwidth (amount of data over time) and latency (amount of time it takes to get an piece of data from A to B)

Latency affects the 'stickyness' of interactive applications (gaming, voice of IP, remote logins etc) and for me is the more important factor than absolute bandwidth. Ideally latency under load of the link should not increase significantly. Latency on a link can never decrease, you can increase the bandwidth (buy another line and pair them together) but you'll not decrease the latency by doing so.

There's been quite a bit of research into 'bufferbloat', a condition that has affected home routers whereby latency increases under load; set that download/upload going and your web browsing or interactive login response times go slow & sticky. This condition can be managed, see wiki 'bufferbloat' and 'codel'.

A fairly contended link is a wonderful thing, even if it doesn't quite have the bandwidth you'd like at least the interactive stuff doesn't get penalised by the big, fat up/downloads.

In reply to a post by woodmass14:

Well with a family of 5 i'd take all the speed that was offered to me, currently at 6mbps so doesn't run to good when 3 people are running netflix. and with all this 4k tech coming along we'll need it

for 5 people 100mbps will be plenty, even with 4K!

I would actually say that 50mbps would be plenty enough but I'll be generous by saying 20mb.

I don't understand why everyone seems to think they need a substantial download speed in their home connections... even with 4K coming, the likely hood of 5 people streaming separate 4K streams at the same time is unlikely and the fact is that it will be streamed using a compression method so will use less bandwidth than people seem to be anticipating anyway.

I think each person in a house hold should have 10mbps bandwidth available to them, so a household of three would have 30mbps connection and when more bandwidth (20mbps) is required for one person it can be shared from each persons allowance temporarily as in most cases this will only be a short burst of speed to build a buffer.

Anyway, many are also forgetting that most ISP's have customers suffering peak time bandwidth shortages or in most cases a single threads bandwidth is cut from say 50mbps to 10Mbps meaning 10mbps will only be available for one stream instead of 50mbps, and my findings are this is fine, but the more bandwidth people are allowed/try to pull the worst everyone connections will get nationwide.

I remember reading a couple of months back about our Internet usage being managed more in future due to the power usage but I think the same thing will start happening again with bandwidth.

try downloading a 50 gig game and you may appreciate it

also multitasking with multiple netflix hd streams going.

all depends on usage really.

Or uploading a whole bunch of raw digital photos.

I like the idea of faster speeds but my usage would be very bursty for the most part - want the speed for a short period of time and then won't use much at all for a while.

I would buy the BT 330/30 service at a reasonable price (not the price that FTTPoD was pitched at and not for a 3 year contract).

My brother has just got proper FTTP available. I told him his options around packages. As I say, I would have gone for the 200 or 330Mb packages - he went for the 40Mb package - what a waste

Considering the OP has only just converted over from a slow ADSL service, it will probably take them some time to shake off the shackles imposed by the snail-paced previous service.