Like all top Broadband information sites, Compare Broadband uses SamKnows which is the UK’s leading Broadband Availability website. Their information powers our Broadband Availability test that let’s you know which ISP is available in your area.
Whilst it will to change in the future, currently, with the exception of Virgin Media, the majority of Broadband connections are ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line), which means they use your phone line (copper wire). Its called Asymmetric because the download speed is likely to be faster than the upload speed. Virgin Media have a cable network that uses fibre rather than copper lines.
If you’d like to find out which ISPs are in your area, use the Compare Broadband, Broadband Comparison Table, which ranks the ISPs and details the Broadband packages they offer.
How fast should your Broadband be?
The Compare Broadband ISP table will tell you what’s Available, but its important to think about how much is enough. Broadband speeds are quoted in Mbps (Megabits per second). Simply put this is a measure of how much data can be transferred to your home computer from a website. This could be music, video, text, photographs or graphics. The greater the capacity of your internet connection, the faster you are going to be able to download data (i.e websites).
If you are using ADSL the most likely factor that will affect your connection speed is your distance from the Telephone Exchange. You can use SamKnows to map how far away you are from your closest Telephone Exchange by using their Exchange Finder. If you’re using fibre, this is less relevant “ fibre performance is more likely to be affected by the number of households who are active on the Internet at the same time as you. This is referred to as contention.
The other main factor that’s likely to impact your speed, other than what package you buy or how far away you are from the Telephone Exchnage, or how many people are online near you at the same time is your home set-up. This can mean an issue with any of the following: home router, home wiring, home pc, home modem, thickness of your walls (if using wireless), etc. It is these variables that led Ofcom to choose the SamKnows hardware monitoring solution, and its ability to collect data 24/7 rather than just when a user’s PC is on. The effect of this is that no matter what package you buy, the speeds you actually enjoy may be impacted by factors beyond the control of your Broadband supplier.
In reality though, unless your playing games or downloading a huge amount of rich media (video/photos), the majority of families will be okay with standard broadband supplier packages 10Mbps, although in the future we will need faster connections, no doubt! So if you’re mostly using your internet connection for sending emails, surfing the Internet, perhaps shopping online, then you’re okay to go for one of the smaller packages.