We have AT&T for our cell phones and fiber internet. They are offering me a "55+" bundled package for $99 a month for both our phones and fiber internet.
The cellular package would be identical to what we currently have (unlimited everything except hotspot data which is limited to 10 GB/month). The fiber package is unlimited data, but upload and download is restricted to 300 mbps. Our current plan restricts us 500 mbps.
Neither of us is a gamer. Our primary internet use is streaming video (HD or 4K), but mostly on to a single TV at a time. If there's a game on and we have people over, then two TVs. Everything else is even less bandwidth heavy than streaming video. We stream music (mostly Apple Music to Sonos), browse, and use email. I download/upload files from work once in a while, but they aren't particularly large (less than 50MB).
We do use iCloud to backup our Macs, phones, and to store HKSV. Other than that, video from our cameras is stored on the LAN, and mostly viewed locally.
So it seems to me that restricting our fiber bandwidth to 300 mbps will not affect us much. Am I missing something obvious in my perspective on this?
You are OK with your plan. Make sure you set your phone to use internet vice broadband when at home.
One nice feature is att has a method to back up their router with your phone on the same subscription if the router input fails. If you are in a 5G area, gives internet for your laptop and maybe for the tv.
That sounds right to me too, based on the needs you mentioned.
I upgraded our Fios from 1 Gb to 2-2.5 Gb recently. Do we really need that bandwidth? Most of the time probably not, but I’m impatient and when I want to download a game from Steam, I want it now.
You got me curious so asked Gemini (it's part of Chrome and free ) YMMV but it came back with:
Recommended internet download and upload speeds for common household activities, based on general internet service standards and the FCC Broadband Guide: [1]
Household Use Case
Recommended Download Speed
Recommended Upload Speed
Key Considerations
Basic Web Browsing & Email
1 – 5 Mbps
1 Mbps
Light usage, single user.
Social Media & Music Streaming
3 – 5 Mbps
1 – 2 Mbps
Platforms like Spotify or scrolling Instagram.
HD Video Streaming (1080p)
5 – 10 Mbps
2 Mbps
Streaming Netflix, YouTube, or Hulu on one device.
4K Ultra HD Video Streaming
25 – 35 Mbps
5 Mbps
Higher bandwidth required per screen.
Video Conferencing (Zoom/Teams)
5 – 10 Mbps
3 – 5 Mbps
Crucial for working from home to prevent freezing.
Casual Online Gaming
10 – 25 Mbps
3 – 5 Mbps
Download speed handles game state; upload handles actions.
Heavy Gaming & Large Downloads
100+ Mbps
10 – 20 Mbps
Necessary to download 50GB+ game files quickly.
Live Game Streaming (Twitch/YouTube)
25+ Mbps
10 – 15 Mbps
High upload speed prevents dropped frames while playing.
Multiplying for the Whole House
If you have a multi-user home, you need to aggregate these speeds.
1–2 Users:100 Mbps download is generally plenty for simultaneous HD streaming and casual browsing. [1]
3–5 Users:300 to 400 Mbps download comfortably covers a mix of 4K streaming, working from home, and online gaming across multiple concurrent devices. [1, 2]
5+ Users or Smart Homes:500 to 1,000 Mbps (Gigabit) handles heavy concurrent usage, constant large file transfers, and dozens of smart home devices.
Note that Gemini is assuming that your Smart Home devices are all cloud based which is an invalid assumption for Hubitat.
I would love to have options. But, where I live, we have the option of Comcast/Xfinity or dialup. None of the cellular carriers even reach our house (outside, I get one bar unless I drive another 2 miles up the road).
Also, we game and have some heavy traffic. So, minimum 1 GB for us here. (Although Comcrap is limited to 40M upload)
For those who dont want to guess… this is how i made this decision. I pulled my actual download usage from my router. I took the 99% of the max to remove the random bursty outliers like os updates and graphed it over 30 days. When I was monitoring data center network performance we used 80%, but the data patterns are different from home users than data centers and the number was WAY too low.
In my case over 30days, 99% of the time my bandwidth usage was under 50mbs. The lowest my ISP will provide is 100mbs, so i fiquired i’d give it a shot for 30 days and see if i noticed. That was 3 months ago and i haven’t.
I still think its funny that when i called to lower my plan they ran me through a bunch of questions about how many devices i have, how many stream video and or games and told me i needed to be in the 1gb plan…
Your ISP knows EXACLY how much bandwidth you actually use, i wish all of them made it available to you.
My advice is to always shop around for the best price. I know many locations don't have much of a choice. We have Verizon FiOS or Optimum Fiber here. I've had 1Gig service since it became available in my area. I was with Verizon for years, until 2 years ago they decided to increase my rate without offering any discounts. I declined and switch to Optimum. Stuck with that for just shy of a year, when Verizon decided they wanted me back bad enough to offer 1Gig fiber for $49.99 per month. When that discount expires in December, I'll see what they offer, and if nothing worthwhile, I can switch back to Optimum and get 2Gig fiber for $50/month.
So for me, it's not really a matter of what I need. It comes down to how much I can get for the best price.
@aaiyar - don't want to derail your main question but have what I think is a related question since you have noted you have AT&T for both phone & home service.
For me part of the decision on service provider has been that I didn't want both my cell & home service from the same vendor. Reason being that if Verizon has a serious outage I don't want to lose both my home and phone connectivity. So we currently have Verizon for our phones and Spectrum for home.
I've never asked anyone about this...am I crazy here?
unrelated or related. I punted my att access points I had in 2 locations where the house is empty half the year. I was just using it for kasa wifi switches to remotely reboot my main router or cable modem etc if need. be. It has occasionally saved my butt.
Att raised all there rates recently and those lines went up to almost 30 per month.
Anyway, switched to usmobile
8 dollars a month for the first line and 10 extra for each additional on a shared 2gb per month plan.
Maybe, a little… you are here. Your concern is valid though. a couple of yrs ago Spectrum went down hard for half a day and took out a good chunk of the city. It was so bad my job sent us all home, i couldn’t even use my card at the grocery store. When i got home my ATT backup WAN was running the show and I was still up.
I brought 3 lines to USM from Verizon. My bill is over $100 a month less on USM than when I was on Verizon. I am on Unlimited Starter at $25 per line all taxes and fees included.
I would highly recommend them, and if you do need support their Reddit team is A+ on top of things much better than nearly any support team I have ever dealt with. (Hubitat's excellent team is the other exception to the norm.)
OK, I am now interested in US Mobile because of you and Kahn...take responsibility, guys.
One of my first thoughts was security, things like the number lock & SIM protection options on Verizon to lock things down so that it's at least harder for someone to steal your number. Does US Mobile include those types of security settings/options?
) YMMV but it came back with:
