What is a good internet speed?

The speed tiers that matter

Speed plans are sold in round numbers that bundle several very different use cases. These are the tiers worth recognising.

• 5–10 Mbps — email, browsing, music streaming, and HD video calls for one person. Fine, but no headroom.
• 25 Mbps / 5 Mbps — the modern baseline. Comfortable for a household of three or four with HD streaming and video calls.
• 100 Mbps / 20 Mbps — the sweet spot for most homes. Several 4K streams, large downloads and daily video meetings without contention.
• 300–1000 Mbps — worth it for 4K on multiple screens, large console downloads, cloud backups and heavy shared use.
• Above 1 Gbps — rarely necessary for a home. The bottleneck usually moves to Wi-Fi, the router or the server you are talking to.

Why upload speed is the number to watch

Almost every plan is advertised on download speed, but upload is what determines whether your calls work. A 100 Mbps line with 8 Mbps upload will struggle to hold a 1080p video call while someone else streams. Every major provider now advertises a symmetric figure, and symmetric fibre at a lower headline number is usually the better buy than asymmetric cable at a higher one.

Ping and jitter matter more than you think

Bandwidth tells you how much data can move at once. Latency tells you how long it takes to move any of it. For anything interactive — gaming, voice calls, remote desktop, trading — latency dominates the experience. Under 20 ms is excellent, 20–50 ms is fine for most people, and above 100 ms will feel sluggish regardless of how fast your download is.

The gap between advertised and delivered speed

Providers advertise the maximum of the line, and shared local infrastructure means every subscriber on your segment shares the capacity. During peak hours you will see less than the headline figure. A consistent result at 80–90% of your plan at 9pm is normal and generally indicates a healthy line.