If you need reliable internet to earn a living or are fed up with family movie night being disrupted by buffering, good internet speeds are a must. But, somehow, there are many households and businesses in the UK who are struggling to get the speeds they need.
Without understanding what good upload and download speeds are, it’s difficult to rectify the problem. It’s also hard to know if you’re getting a good deal with your internet service provider. As speed is one of the biggest factors when choosing a broadband provider, this can be a problem.
In this guide, we’ll explain what upload and download speeds are, how they’re measured and how to test them. After reading this, you’ll have all the info you need to find a solution to your internet speed woes.
What is download speed?
Download speed refers to the time it takes to download images, text or other files to your device. When you stream music, watch videos online or open an email attachment, download speed impacts how frictionless the experience is.
What is upload speed?
Upload speed refers to the time it takes to upload data to the internet. Sending an email, posting a video on YouTube and saving files to an online server are all examples of uploading data. If these activities take a lot longer for your device to complete than can be reasonably expected, poor upload speeds could be to blame.
Download speed vs upload speed
For most daily activities, download speed is more important than upload speed. This is why the speeds advertised by broadband providers usually refer to the download speed, rather than the upload speed. But that doesn’t mean upload speed should be ignored.
Some tasks require good upload and download speeds simultaneously. For example, video calling and interactive online gaming use intensive amounts of both downloading and uploading power.
How is broadband speed measured?
Broadband speed is typically measured in megabits per second (Mbps). However, it’s also sometimes written as gigabits per second (Gbps) or kilobits per second (Kbps).
A bit is the smallest unit of measurement here. 1Mbps therefore means one million bits per second, 1Gbps means one billion bits per second and 1Kbps means one thousand bits per second.
Megabit vs megabyte
Some people confuse megabits and megabytes (MB), but they are very different things. While megabits measure speed, megabytes measure storage capacity.
One megabyte is equal to eight megabits. An easy way of understanding this is to look at the following example:
Imagine you are trying to download a file with a size of 2MB.
1MB = 8Mbps so 2MB = 16Mbps.
If your internet speed is 16Mbps, it will therefore take 1 second to download the 2MB file.
Internet bandwidth, on the other hand, refers to the amount of data that the connection is capable of transferring at any given time.
What is a good download speed?
Whether your download speed is good or not depends on what you use the internet for. A ‘good’ speed is a speed that meets your needs, not some arbitrary number.
For most people’s requirements, 25Mbps should be a good enough download speed. Anything less than 10Mbps is considered poor and anything over 30Mbps is considered to be superfast broadband.
However, if there are multiple people in your household who stream things in HD or carry out other high-usage tasks, you might need a speed of over 50Mbps.
The average download speed in the UK is 59.4Mbps according to Ofcom’s latest report.
What is a good upload speed?
An upload speed of around 5-10Mbps will be good for most people. Unless you’re a pro-YouTuber, serious gamer or spend most of your working day on video calls, it’s unlikely you’ll have any issues with an upload speed of 10Mbps.
The average upload speed in the UK is 10.7Mbps.
Does connection type affect speed?
In a simple answer, yes, connection type does affect speed. Most households in the UK have an ADSL connection, although fibre optic broadband is being rapidly rolled out, bringing much faster speeds with it.
Here is what’s considered to be a good speed for the different types of internet connection:
| Connection type | Avg. download speed |
| Dial-up | Less than 0.1Mbps |
| ADSL | 10-20Mbps |
| Cable | 20-30Mbps |
| Fibre optic | 30-100Mbps |
What internet speed do I need?
The internet speed that you need depends on how you and the other people you live with use the internet. The table below shows what internet speeds are required for some of the most common online activities.
| Activity | Download speed needed |
| Web browsing | 5-10Mbps |
| Video streaming | 10-20Mbps |
| HD video streaming | 15-30Mbps |
| Online gaming | 10-50Mbps |
| Downloading files | 10-100Mbps |
It’s important to bear in mind that these figures alone won’t indicate the internet speed that you need. The number of people and devices simultaneously connected to the internet also has an impact. Even if you live by yourself, your mobile phone or smart home devices could be draining internet bandwidth behind the scenes.
Our full guide to what internet speed you need breaks down how to figure out the right internet speed for your needs.
How can I check my internet speed?
You can check your broadband speed easily with one of the many online broadband speed checkers. For an extra accurate result, turn off WiFi on your computer and connect it to your router directly with an ethernet cable before carrying out the test.
If the speed registering from your router looks okay, then the problem might be something else. In this case, check out our ways to improve your internet speed.
How to get good internet speeds, no matter where you live
The download and upload speeds that are available to you can vary depending on where you live.
For example, getting internet to rural areas presents more problems than getting it to urban locations with great infrastructure, so countryside internet options are often limited. The gap between the average urban and rural broadband speeds is widening, up 16% since 2021.
Country dwellers can therefore benefit from speaking to a fixed wireless internet provider like Wave Internet. If that sounds like you, get in touch and a member of our friendly team will explain how we can help.
Alternatively, if you are a business looking into alternative types of internet to help you achieve higher speeds, check out our business broadband packages.
