Each year, most home internet users face a price increase for the service they’re using, either because a promotional price ends or, well, their provider just wants some more cash.
You may let it pass, if it’s not too much of a hike, or you may do what I do annually - negotiate to keep the cost down. Often, that negotiation involves the provider offering another promotional price for faster speeds.
That’s how I wound up with Comcast’s 1-gigabit-per-second service last spring. As I wrote in a column in April, I was offered a deal that has me paying the same amount for gigabit service as I did for a speed about a third of that.
I mean, I don’t need gigabit speed. As empty-nesters, it’s just my wife and me quarantining in our modest swankienda. We have a single HD TV, so we’re not streaming 4K video all day. We don’t play games online, though we both use videconferencing for our work-from-home jobs. Neither of us is a gamer.
FASTER, COSTLIER: Bleeding-edge internet bleeds out your wallet
A recent email from a reader of my weekly newsletter made me ponder just how much speed most folks really need. It’s possible many internet customers are oversubscribed, and could save cash by dropping back to a slower tier, and not miss the extra megabits.
In this case, the reader was on a 175-Mbps Comcast plan that bundled voice telephone service, which she was considering dropping because she and her husband almost exclusively talk on their cell phones. They are fairly light internet users, though they watch TV and movies via streaming rather than cable.
She was paying about $149 a month, she said, about $95 of which was for internet service. That’s a lot for 175 Mbps service. Considering what she and her husband use, I estimated she could probably get by with a slower tier - say, 100 Mbps downloads.
There are several websites that feature bandwidth calculators that can estimate just how much speed a given household might need. They ask questions about the number of internet users in the home, what devices are present and what services they use, then spit out a recommendation. But I found that the results vary widely.
STREAM IT: How to be a cord cutter in 2020
For example, at HighSpeedInternet.com, a third-party site that lets you compare internet providers in your area, a calculator said the reader’s household as she described it would need 100 Mbps. That was the same amount I got when I entered my own household’s usage.
I found a promotional price for that speed with a one-year contract on Comcast’s site for $35 a month, and $55 with no contract. Even without a contract, the reader could save substantially.
But BroadbandNow.com, another comparison site, suggested an even lower speed - around 43 Mbps. Comcast offers a 25-Mbps plan then jumps to 100 Mbps. Even knowing that more conservative estimate, I’d still recommend 100 Mbps.
I reached out to both sites for comment on how they come up with their estimates, and only heard back from HighSpeedInternet.com. Staff writer Rebecca Lee Armstrong said the estimates stem from “our knowledge of how people use the internet.”
“When I recommend internet speeds, I really think about what you do with your internet connection and how many devices are connected to your service service,” Armstrong said. “I also ask how much of that is used at the same time.”
Release Notes: Get Dwight Silverman’s weekly tech newsletter in your inbox
And if you work from home, she added, there’s the factor of upload speeds. Traditional internet providers - such as cable and DSL services - typically offer upload speeds that are about a tenth of download speeds. For most users day to day, that’s adequate. But depending on what you do for a living, you may need to upload bigger files, or transmit video, which would require more upload bandwidth.
Surprisingly, videoconferencing apps such as Zoom don’t require as much bandwidth as you might think. Armstrong’s minimum recommendation for those is 1-Mbps uploads, while Comcast’s mid-tier services offer 5 Mbps to10 Mbps uploads. If you have multiple people in a household doing videoconferencing at the same time, or gaming as well, things can begin to bog down with too-slow upload speeds.
(The days of upload speeds that are a fraction of downloads may be coming to an end. AT&T is pushing its fiber service, which has upload and download speeds that are close to symmetrical. And Comcast recently tested a new version of the DOCSIS cable modem standard that also provides symmetrical speeds, though don’t expect to be able to get that anytime soon.)
In households with children, particularly pre-teens and teens, the combination of video, gaming, videoconferencing and web usage would put serious stress on a 100-Mbps connection. Those kinds of families will need the high-speed tiers.
Regardless, when you renegotiate your internet service next time, consider backing off on your speed, if it makes sense for your household. Still, more speed will give you some overhead in case your internet use evolves.
“More bandwidth will not negatively affect your internet, but it might negatively affect your wallet,” Armstrong said.
dwight.silverman@chron.com
twitter.com/dsilverman
houstonchronicle.com/techburger
"may" - Google News
October 21, 2020 at 06:00PM
https://ift.tt/3jjrCgi
You may be paying for more internet speed than you need - Houston Chronicle
"may" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3foH8qu
https://ift.tt/2zNW3tO
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "You may be paying for more internet speed than you need - Houston Chronicle"
Post a Comment