How much broadband speed do you need?

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When choosing your broadband package it's important to think about what speed is best for you. Your total broadband speed will be shared amongst all your connected devices. If you’ve got lots of devices doing different things online, all at the same time, you’ll need speeds that can keep up.

To help you, this guide explains the speeds you need for common online activities. We've also summarised the speeds you can expect from our packages, along with how long it would take to download your favourite music, movies, games and TV shows.

The term "speed" refers to throughput speed. You can check yours using our broadband speed test.

How speed is measured

Broadband speed is digitally measured using Megabits or Megabits per second (Mbps). The more Megabits your broadband can transfer per second, the faster your connection is and the more you can do online. 

How much speed you need

Here are the throughput speeds you need for common online activities, as recommended by Ofcom.

This table advises the speed needed for each activity

Activity	Throughput speed required
Web browsing & Email	1Mbps
Video streaming (SD)	3Mbps
Video streaming (HD)	5Mbps
Video streaming (Ultra HD)	30Mbps
Music streaming	2Mbps
Online phone service (e.g. WhatsApp)*	0.256Mbps
Video calling (e.g. FaceTime)*	1Mbps
Gaming*	3Mbps

*These services are more likely to be affected by broadband latency.

You can use the figures above to estimate how much speed you'll need on your home connection. For example, if you wanted to stream HD video on 2 devices and browse the web on a third device, your broadband speed needs to be at least 11Mbps. If you've often got multiple devices connected at the same time, you'll likely get the best experience with Fibre broadband.

How speed affects download times

Here are the average speeds and download times you can expect on our packages.

This table advises the average download times

		Average Download times
TalkTalk Product	Average Throughput Speed (Mbps)	0.1GB File e.g. Photo Album download	0.5GB File e.g. Music Album download	1GB File e.g. Movie (SD) download	10GB File e.g. Movie (HD) download	100GB File e.g. Game or Movie (UHD) download
							Fast BB	11	1 min 20 secs	6.5 mins	13 mins	2 hrs 10 mins	21hrs 40 mins
Fibre 35	38	25 secs	2 mins	4 mins	35 mins	6 hrs
Fibre 65	77	12 secs	1 min	2 mins	21 mins	3.5 hrs
Fibre 150	152	5 secs	29 secs	59 secs	10 mins	1hs 39 mins
Fibre 250	290	2 secs	14 secs	29 secs	5 mins	49 mins
Fibre 500	525	2 secs	10 secs	20 secs	4 mins	34 mins
Fibre 900	944	1 sec	5 secs	11 secs	2 mins	19 mins

Throughput speed

Throughput speed is how fast data is sent (uploaded) and received (downloaded) over the broadband connection in your home. It comes into play when you’re using any devices at home that require an Internet connection.

Bandwidth & latency

Your bandwidth is the amount of information your Internet connection can handle at any given time. Latency is the amount of time it takes to send this information from one point to the next.

Imagine your broadband connection is a road with cars travelling on it. Your bandwidth is the road and latency is the cars. The cars will reach their destination quickly if the road has multiple lanes, and more slowly if the road has just one lane. Video calls, gaming and online phone services are more likely to be affected by latency.