Category: Tech

The internet network provider Openreach announced in May 2024 that the area served by the Camberley telephone exchange will be upgraded to support fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) by the end of 2026.  

FTTP will provide Gigabit internet service to both domestic and business users and provide users an alternative to toob and VirginMedia. Until now, Openreach has only offered VDSL broadband to homes in the Camberley area. VDSL is capable of delivering speeds of up to 80 Mbps, though many homes get rather less.

Openreach’s announcement comes late in the roll-out of Gigabit, whose goal is to provide Gigabit internet services to 85% of homes and businesses in the UK. FTTP offers higher reliability and much faster access to new digital services such as cloud file storage, TV streaming to multiple 4K screens and online gaming.

There are 3 network providers in the Camberley area.

• Openreach (or BT) with services to every household and business in the area.
• VirginMedia has offered cable or fibre internet services for many years. It has a fairly good coverage of the area.
• Toob is a relative newcomer. Again it has fairly good coverage of the area but is still growing its network.

Neither of the newer providers offer services to every address in the area and many households need to rely on Openreach for internet connection.

Openreach sells its internet services via ISPs such as BT, EE, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone, Zen, etc.  In the future, you’ll be able to order gigabit-capable internet services from your choice of ISP and pricing is likely to be more competitive.  The change to FTTP is not an automatic upgrade, although some ISPs are doing free automatic upgrades as older copper-based services and lines are slowly withdrawn.

Typical prices are £35 pm for 500 Mbps.

Ispreview.co.uk

Openreach

• TV Broadcasters are pushing towards an online-only (IPTV) future
• Satellites used to carry Sky and Freesat service reach end of life at the end of the decade (by 2030)
• Sky and Freesat gear up to migrate viewers to IPTV platforms

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Could Sky really migrate all of its subscribers away from satellite in just five years?

It’s been done before. Sky previously moved viewers from its analogue to digital satellite service in just a three year period between 1998 and 2001. That required new equipment and new dishes for each of its subscribers.

Sky Q users can expect their TV service to continue in its current form for a few more years. However, Sky is introducing new features to its latest receivers only, although Sky Q remains well supported for existing customers. Already, a lot of Sky Q’s extra functionality relies on an internet connection.

Sky does not sell SkyQ to new customers but offers Sky Glass or Sky Stream. However, Sky has signed a satellite deal lasting to the end of the twenties. This would indicate Sky will support Sky Q customers until then.

Sky offers the Sky Stream puck which will connect to a household’s existing internet connection. It can be used in conjunction with any Internet Service Provider. Viewers also have the option of getting a Sky Glass TV, with Sky’s internet based TV service built in.

Could Freesat really migrate all of its users before satellite TV switch-off?

Later in 2024, Freely will begin to replace Freesat. All new receivers will be a hybrid that can receive traditional broadcast services and IP-delivered online services. The receiver can be programmed to automatically default to an IP-stream of a channel in place of the satellite signal. Therefore, once satellite services expire, Freely receivers will seamlessly continue receiving services online.

Unlike Sky Glass and Sky Stream, Freely receivers won’t have the initial problem of viewers missing channels they could receive on satellite. Freely receivers with satellite capability will continue to receive satellite-only services as well as IP-streaming channels.

Existing Freesat receivers will gradually receive fewer and fewer services until the final services eventually leave satellite. But this won’t happen until at least the end of the decade.

https://rxtvinfo.com/2024/how-soon-is-satellite-tv-switch-off/

March 2024

Back in September 2023, the UK’s biggest free-to-air Public Service Broadcasters (PSBs) – the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5 – announced a new smart TV streaming service that will allow users to watch live TV via the internet (IPTV) for free. The platform, called Freely, is expected to arrive soon in Q2 2024. More news here.

Freely is designed to bridge the gap between conventional terrestrial television and online entertainment by offering live free-to-air TV without the need for an aerial.

Freely will compliment iPlayer, ITVX, More4 and My5 and allow users to watch live IPTV from these PSBs through a simgle application, without having to swap between apps when they swap from channel to channel. It will initially be available on new smart TV sets, but it is thought to become available later on other devices, like Fire TV and Roku sticks. Ideally, Freely will be available on all devices that run Freeview.

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Review in Mirror

Future of TV distribution

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There is a lot of chatter about WiFi-5, WiFi-6 and the new WiFi-7

I found this simple chart to outline the technology standards

https://www.truecable.com/blogs/cable-academy/wifi-7-vs-wifi-6-whats-the-difference

The peak speed and the actual speed obtained are very different measures. WiFi-6 should deliver gigabit speeds for faster applications. The higher frequency bands (5 and 6 GHz) don’t pass through brick walls easily.

For an explanation of some of the terms used – click here

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with thanks to the ZZOOMM website

Internet Service Provider Email Accounts

Many broadband services come with a free email address when you sign up. This service addition can create a dilemma when it comes to switching ISPs (Internet Service Providers). Our email accounts are used not just for communication, but commonly to store important information with the companies we have a relationship with.

That means changing an ISP-provided email address can sometimes be considered a barrier to switching to a faster, better AltNet ISP (such as Zzoomm).

The good news is that it needn’t be! You don’t have to lose your email account or your data. Most broadband companies will allow you to switch and keep your email address, although some may charge you a fee for doing so and some may restrict access to it via a web client.

This section takes a look at the various ISP variations and what you need to know about the email addresses provided if you’re planning to switch ISP’s.

At the core of the matter is the question, can you keep your provider-linked email address? The short answer is yes, sometimes — but the real question is, should you?

Keeping your email address when you switch broadband providers

Not all providers will allow you to keep your email address once you switch. For example, the Post Office and Virgin Media will delete your email account once you’ve left.

However, a number of other providers allow you to retain access to your email address for a monthly fee. These fees aren’t fixed by external governing bodies so can be very expensive.

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Specific Supplier Examples

Can I keep my email address if I leave BT for Zzoomm?

You can still access your BT email address for 60 days after you switch to a different broadband provider. After that, you’ll have to subscribe to BTs Premium Mail service to retain access. As the name suggests, you’ll need to pay a monthly fee, currently £5 each month for the account. Switching is relatively simple and BT will automatically move your accounts across for you.

I’m switching from Plusnet to Zzoomm, will I lose my Plusnet email account?

If you switch from Plusnet to another provider, you can take your email account with you. Like BT and others, the company will charge a monthly fee and will migrate the account and all emails for you.

Can I ditch Sky to get Zzoomming and keep my email address?

Sky has switched to Sky Yahoo! Mail, which the company claims means you have an “email for life”. It is essentially the free Yahoo! Mail but with Sky branding. That means if you switch from Sky, you’ll be able to keep your email address, and with it all the messages and data you’ve stored in your account. Sky does reserve the right to delete an account if you haven’t used it for 180 days. If Sky closes a “dormant” account, you’ll lose any associated data and content.

I want to switch to Zzoomm from TalkTalk, can I keep my TalkTalk email account?

All TalkTalk broadband customers have TalkTalk Mail included in their package. Should you leave TalkTalk, you can subscribe to TalkTalk Mail Plus and keep your email address, currently for £5 per month or £50 per year. Otherwise, you’ll see your functionality reduce 30 days after you leave, and after 5 months TalkTalk will delete it.

Can I switch from Virgin Broadband to Zzoomm and keep my email account?

Once you give notice to Virgin Media, you’ll have 90 days before your email address is cancelled. After that, Virgin Media will clear out your emails, delete all data associated with your account and shut it down.

You may be with an ISP that we haven’t listed here so the best thing for you to do is contact them directly and ask if you can keep your email address when you switch to Zzoomm.

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What’s an alternative: Why not get a free email account that is not tied to a provider?

You don’t need to be tied to any broadband provider with your email account. You can make the switch to a free webmail account. While it might be a hassle in the short term, it will give you the freedom to switch pain-free for years to come.

There are a number of options available including Apple iCloud, Google’s Gmail, Microsoft Outlook (formerly Hotmail) and Yahoo! Mail. The choice you make may depend on the types of devices you have (if you’re using an iPhone versus an Android-Google phone, for example, or if you use a PC or laptop for email).

You may wish to take this opportunity to consider having several new email accounts – one for social media, one for business, one for family, one for banking and one for online shopping accounts.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that the storage capacity for each may vary, although some will allow you to pay a monthly subscription to increase storage.

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Moving your email to Gmail

Visit gmail.com and follow the on-screen instructions. Once you have set up your Gmail account click on the settings menu, (the cog icon in the top right corner).

Click ‘Accounts and Import’ and then ‘Import mail and contacts’.

You’ll need to enter your email address here and follow the on-screen instructions.

Don’t Lose An Address

Once your new email is set up, it’s a good idea to export your contacts from your old account, if you set up a Gmail account you can follow the instructions above. It’s also a good idea to send out an email to your main contacts to let them know you’ll be using a new address from now on.

Forward Your History

It is worth considering setting up a forwarding system in your old account while you are in transition so that new email is automatically forwarded to your new email address, which may seem a bit tricky but is usually found in your inbox settings. This means for new mail you only need to manage one mailbox.

For example, with BT Connect, you would navigate to ‘Manage Services -> Email Summary -> highlight your email address in the box -> click ‘Email Forwarding’.

Enter your new Gmail address and click ‘Save’.

Make a Clean Break

In order to keep your information secure, it is good practice to delete all your old emails. Then create a new password to ensure that the old account stays secure until it’s finally closed down. It’s best to set up your new email account with your new provider using a new password too.

Set up an auto-responder

If your email service supports this, you might also want to set up an auto-responder for your old email address that lets anyone who contacts you know that their email has been forwarded to a new address.

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Update accounts linked to your old email address

Depending on how long you’ve had your email address, you may have a lot of additional services linked to this address. Be sure to update as many of your login details as possible while you still have access to your old provider-linked address as you may need to reconfirm the new details and in situations where you forget your login, the reminder email will be sent to an old address if not updated.

Here’s an example checklist of the most common things we would need to update ourselves – for instance:

• Streaming services
• Energy and household bill payments
• Online banking
• Online payments
• Social media accounts
• Cloud storage
• Gaming accounts
• Work systems
• Cloud tools

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Most internet service providers (ISP) provide you with an email address. It’s usually how you log into their website to access your account information, pay bills online, etc, so it makes sense that they do this. 

I offer the following advice:

Don’t use your ISP’s email address as your primary email address. 

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Switching ISPs

I hear you asking “why not?”  Well, the only reason you really need is the fact that you might switch ISPs at some point in the future. If you switch ISPs, what happens to your ISP email account when you stop paying the ISP for your internet service?  Some ISPs might let you keep it, but it’s not really in their best interest to provide that email service when you’re no longer paying them on a monthly basis.

ISP’s are getting out the email business

Sometimes ISP’s close, go out of business or are taken over by another ISP.  Tiscali was taken over and is closing their email service or asking users to pay to keep it open.  Click here.  Or here.  Or here.

Some ISPs (VM, Sky) are no longer providing email addresses for new customers. It doesn’t seem they have a long-term committment to provide email services. I also hear that one ISP is proposing to close its email service whilst continuing as an ISP – Click Here

Changing email providers

As anyone who has done it can attest, it’s not easy to change your email address.  Think of the hundreds of friends, family, websites, retailers, etc. that use your email address to communicate with you. Do you really remember every important website or service that you registered your email address with?  They probably include your bank, utilities, social networks, shopping websites like Amazon, entertainment services like iTunes and Netflix, your school, your employer, various reward/loyalty clubs for stores, and the list goes on. If you switch ISPs, you’ve got to log in to each account and update your email address. What a pain!

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Feature Limitations

I have yet to see an ISP’s email service match the feature set of top email services like Gmail or Outlook. There are advantages and disadvantages in using any email provider – lets look at some issues:

Email Integrity

Are the contents of the email you send or receive secure from prying eyes? Be aware that email is generally considered to be insecure. There are new email services that encrypt the data – these are much more secure.

IMAP vs POP3

Email services from many ISPs only support the POP3 standard instead of the IMAP standard. IMAP allows you to sync your email across multiple devices like your smartphone, desktop PC, laptop, tablet, etc. Any change you make on one device, such as deleting a message, will be reflected on all of the other devices. It also supports most email functions like moving messages into folders.

POP3 is more limited; it simply downloads a copy of an email when you open it on a device and either delete it from the server (so it is only accessible on the device you first viewed it on) or leaves a copy on the server (so when you delete it from the device you viewed it on, it will actually still be on the server and all of your other devices). POP3 is not a secure protocol.

Additional Features and Services

Does your ISP’s email service offer automatic message labeling/sorting, lightning-fast search, and filtering, or value-adds like cloud storage, a calendar, or a task list? Does your provider do a good job at identifying and sorting spam emails? Look for an email provider that offers you features you can use to your advantage.  

Past Performance

Yahoo’s services have had multiple security breaches a few years ago, affecting millions of users. This makes me very unsure about using it as my primary email account.  Other email providers have experienced other issues.  See here
Virgin Media users suffered several multi-day email outages in 2023
– see here and here

Advertising

Some email providers rely on advertising for revenue and interrupt your email experience with unwanted advertising.  All free email service providers are using you as their source of revenue; usually, so they can advertise to you.  The better email providers do not put advertising into their web-based email solutions or into their email applications.

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A Better Email Solution

What’s the alternative? The alternative is to use an email service like Gmail, or Outlook. There are alternatives, but both Gmail and Outlook continue to add features that make managing email easier and faster.   These email services also come with secure online storage for files – Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. Both offer online word-processing and spreadsheet applications (Google Docs, Microsoft Office365) that provide office application functionality, with co-authoring and file-sharing capabilities.

Users of Apple products may wish to remain faithful to Apple and use iCloud. 

Gmail

The obvious next question is what email address should you use? Gmail has the advantage of being a familiar name, being free, and offering lots of storage for attachments. But it’s also hard to get the email address you want, and you do sign away significant chunks of your privacy.

Outlook

If you can cope with an Outlook.com address then this would be my preference, although the same caveats about privacy apply. Outlook offers all the benefits of Gmail. Microsoft’s Hotmail email service has been incorporated into Outlook.

Email Security

Email is not at all secure. The email provider can (and sometimes does) read the content of your emails and use the information gathered for their own purposes. Email can be made more secure by encrypting the content but this is complex and not for the average user.  If you want secure email there are a few providers of email services with enhanced security – notably Proton Mail.

Email applications

There are plenty of email applications for Windows, Mac, Android, or iPhone. These offer plenty of features and are often more feature-rich than the standard web-based application. Use an email application, by all means, if they offer you what you want.

Email service providers to avoid

Avoid all email service providers whose primary activity is being an ISP eg:- ntlworld, virginmedia, btinternet, talk21, talktalk, sky, vodafone, tiscali, ee, o2, plusnet.  Also avoid some of the older original email providers eg:- aol, etc.  

Most popular email services

• Gmail – 2,000 million users – 36% (in 2023)
• Outlook – 400 million users – 9%
• Yahoo – 230 million users – 4%

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Multi Factor Authentication

What is MFA?  Two-factor authentication (2FA) or Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) is a way of strengthening the login security of your online accounts. It’s similar to how an ATM works. You need both your debit card (first factor) and your PIN (second factor) to access your account and withdraw cash. The main objective is better security. If your card is stolen, they still need your PIN. If your PIN is stolen, they still need your card.  Enabling MFA will help to stop hackers from getting into your accounts, even if they have your password. If you are using an email service that does not offer MFA, please consider switching to an email provider that does.

How do I enable MFA on my accounts?  Here are links you can use to enable MFA on some of the most popular online services and apps:

• Gmail
• Outlook
• Yahoo
• AOL
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

An independent review of free email services can be found here – Jan 2023

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For more of the government’s latest advice on how to stay secure online, visit the Cyber Aware website: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/cyberaware

End-to-End Encryption

Email was not designed to be secure.  Although some email providers use encrypted transport, email content is stored unencrypted. There are ways to encrypt the email content. There are also a few providers making secure email available to all by using end-to-end encryption..  It should be noted that when the email is sent to an email provider that does not use end-to-end encryption then the secure nature of the email will be lost.
If the security of the content of your email is key to you then you may wish to use one of these providers.  Proton Mail is just one example of secure email providers. A list of secure email providers is available here

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Passwords

Most important of all your password is key to the security of your email.
– Don’t forget to change your passwords regularly
– Be sure your password is complex and not easy to guess
– Be sure you can remember your passwords
– Consider using a password manager

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Summary

I recommend not using email addresses provided by ISPs but using the email services provided by Microsoft, Google, or Apple. However, if you can’t stand the thought of not using your old and familiar ISP’s email service, then relegate it to the purpose of signing up for services and websites that you think might send a lot of spam. Then, if and when you decide the website or service is OK, you can update your account with your primary email address.

By all means, use more than one email address; in practice, it’s a good idea to have several email addresses.  You can set up your email application and your web-based email reader (Gmail or Outlook) to read the emails of several addresses.

You may want to use one email address for higher security use (eg: online banking); another for online retail (eg: Amazon, eBay), and yet another for social media use, etc.

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Read about a survey which claims that fear of Email Loss stops 2 Million UK Homes Switching ISP

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If you’re hitting your internet providers top speeds, but things still aren’t fast enough for you, upgrading your internet service might be your best bet. However, if you test your connection and see you’re nowhere near the speeds of which your broadband should be capable, you don’t always need to pay to improve your performance. There are ways to boost your wifi performance absolutely free.
Are there paid solutions to your wifi problems? Absolutely. You can throw more money at your ISP, or you can buy a new and improved router. Of course, those methods will cost you, so first you should see if you can speed up your digital life without spending a fortune.

Thanks to LifeHacker

The website THINKBROADBAND.COM is a useful resource for information on UK internet service providers (ISP)

How broadband works
A guide to the various technologies employed to deliver internet service to UK consumers

Fibre – FTTC/FTTH
A useful guide to terms, technologies and speeds

Map
https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/index.php

Map from thinkbroadband.com
A very useful map showing internet availability across the UK.

Broadband checker from OpenReach
https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/

Many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) provide a router that underperforms. There are exceptions, of course, but generally, the router that comes with the broadband service you buy is poor and does not do the job it’s supposed to do.

A ‘router’ has several jobs to do.  It’s a modem, router, firewall, ethernet switch and wireless access point (WiFi) and often it does one or more of these tasks quite well but is too often poor at doing them all.

• A modem has to MOdulate and DEModulate (mo-dem) the radio-frequency electrical signals on the broadband line or the wireless of a mobile phone signal.  The modem converts these to digital signals.  There are different types of modems depending on the broadband service you are buying.  These include cable, ADSL, VDSL, fibre, 4G-LTE and 5G to name but a few.  The modem must match the service provided by your ISP.  Most of the functions of a modem are done by specialised computer chips.
  
• A router and firewall does some technical things with IP protocols including sending data between your home network and the internet.  It might prioritise different protocols and the firewall function determines whether data should flow between the untrusted (outside) network and the trusted (inside) network, according to some firewall rules.  The router and firewall functions are largely performed by software.
  
• An ethernet switch connected different ethernet networks together.  If the router provided by your ISP has several ethernet ports then these are probably connected to an ethernet switch within the router.  This switch is made using specialised computer hardware.
  
• A wireless access point provides the link between a wired network (ethernet) and a wireless network or WiFi.  WiFi allows portable devices to connect to the router without having to trail ethernet cables all over the house.  Again this is a function performed by specialised hardware.

ISPs want to provide consumers with a router that is inexpensive, easy to deliver, configure and simple to use. Keeping the cost of the hardware low has meant the ISP supplied router often performs badly.  

There have been some technological changes with which ISPs are trying to keep up.  Hence the router being provided to new consumers is often more functional than the router being used by customers who have been using the ISP for years.  The BT website lists multiple versions of the BT Smart Hub or Home Hub.  ISPs are reluctant to replace older hardware for consumers unless necessary. 

The technology changes include:

• WiFi – the introduction of newer, faster WiFi standards. The earlier standard WiFi-4 is known as 802.11a/n.  A newer standard 802.11ac (known as WiFi-5) was approved in 2013. Since then (in 2019) 802.11ax (known as WiFi-6) has been approved. Each generation offers improvements (faster) for devices that support the newer standards.
• Mesh WiFi devices have become available.  These offload the WiFi function of the router to several pieces of specialised hardware and interconnects that hardware (in a mesh) so that you might have two, three or even more WiFi access points throughout your home. 
• Ethernet – older routers support ethernet running at 10/100 Mbits/s.  Newer devices support gigabit ethernet.  
• Broadband and cable speeds increased from ADSL’s 10 Mbps, via superfast VDSL fibre to the cabinet (FTTC at ~50Mbps), to fibre-optic cable to the home (FTTH/FTTP) which bought ultrafast gigabit speeds. 
• The router and firewall functions needed to grow and get faster as the traffic through them got faster.  Gigabit (1000Mbps) is a whole lot faster (100 times) than 10Mbps.  The CPU and memory on the router needed to be bigger, faster and better to cope with the demand.
• The number of devices attached to the router in the home (via WiFi or ethernet) increased as we began to have more phones, tablets, PCs, printers, TVs and other devices connected.  
• Working from home (WFH) and home schooling has meant these are actually in regular use for more hours in the day. A few years ago a router might have only a small handful of devices connected.  Today this is likely to be 20 or more.  This significantly increases the work the router needs to do.
• Gaming brings the need for low-latency to reduce the lag-time in the game.  Very often gaming is an application that suffers most from underperforming routers.
• Video streaming and download applications such as Netflix, Youtube, iPlayer have significantly increased the amount of data passing through the router.  The demand for HD or 4K video is increasing. 
• Newer and faster routers were needed to interface to the faster broadband, cable and fibre services being brought to the home by the ISPs.

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What to do if you feel your router is old and not coping?  

• Try to identify the problem.  What are the symptoms and when do they happen?
• Ensure you are getting what you are paying for.  Is your internet service providing the speed (using www.speedtest.net) and reliability the ISP advertises?
  This link’s test may be useful http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest?httpsok=0 
• Do your neighbours with the same ISP have similar issues?
• Is the problem due to WiFi in your home?  Is your router in the best location in the home? Try working with your PC connected to the router via ethernet – do you still have problems when WiFi is not being used?
• Contact your ISP (particularly if the issue seems to be with slow broadband) and report the problems you are having and ask for the latest router to be provided.
• Ask an IT professional for advice – he/she should be able to identify the issues and recommend which of the many options available to you to replace or enhance the router your ISP provides. You might consider more than one option to address the issues.  For example, to use the ISP’s router in modem-only mode, install a separate router/firewall and a mesh WiFi system.
• Buying and installing a new router is a task to be undertaken by someone with a good knowledge of the issues and products on the market.

INCREASE BROADBAND SPEED Tips and Guides

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest?httpsok=0

WiFi Bandwidth comparison – 2.4 GHz vs. 5 GHz signal

Frequency	Theoretical Speed	Real-World Speed
2.4 GHz (802.11b)	11 Mbps	2 – 3 Mbps
2.4 GHz (802.11g)	54 Mbps	10 – 29 Mbps
2.4 GHz (802.11n)	300 Mbps	150 Mbps
5 GHz (802.11a)	6 – 54 Mbps	3 – 32 Mbps
5 GHz (802.11ac)	433 – 1700 Mbps	210 – 1000 Mbps
5 GHz (802.11n)	900 Mbps	450Mbps

WiFi Range comparison – 2.4 GHz vs. 5 GHz signal

Frequency	Theoretical Distance	Real World Distance
2.4 GHz (802.11b)	460 ft	230 ft
2.4 GHz (802.11g)	125 ft	62 ft
2.4 GHz (802.11n)	820 ft	410 ft
5 GHz (802.11a)	390 ft	195 ft
5 GHz (802.11ac)	up to 820 ft (amplified)	up to 410 ft (amplified)
5 GHz (802.11n)	460 ft	230 ft

Broadband Speed Needed for Streaming Services

A good broadband speed for streaming is at least 1.5 megabits per second (Mbps) for TV services such as BBC iPlayer for standard streaming, or 2.8Mbps for HD quality. For Netflix, the minimum speed required is about 3Mbps for standard streaming and 5Mbps for HD. If it’s Ultra HD you’re after, you typically need at least 15Mbps for YouTube, while it’s 25Mbps for Netflix or Amazon Prime Video, if you want to avoid buffering.

Service	Needed for non HD	HD	Full HD/4K
BBC iPlayer, etc	1.5 Mbps	2.8 Mbps	Not available
Netflix	3 Mbps	5 Mbps	25 Mbps
Amazon Prime Video	0.9 Mbps	3.5 Mbps	25 Mbps
YouTube	2.5 Mbps	4 Mbps	15 Mbps

Broadband Speed Needed for Video Calling

Video calling (Zoom, MS-Teams, etc) has doubled during the coronavirus pandemic, with 71% of adult internet users making video calls at least once a week and four in 10 of us making video calls daily. Skype, Zoom and FaceTime are some of the most popular video-calling services. If you use one of these, you need to be aware of both your download and upload speeds. This is because your connection will be receiving and sending data at the same time. Below are the minimum download and upload speeds you’ll need:

Type	Recommended download/upload speed
Skype (HD 1-1 video call)	1.2 Mbps
Zoom HD group video call	Download 2.5 Mbps Upload    3.0 Mbps

Broadband Speed Needed for Gaming

Service	Minimum Download Speed	Recommended Download Speed
Xbox Game Pass Cloud Gaming	10Mbps	N/A
PlayStation Remote Play	15 Mbps	N/A
Google Stadia	10 Mbps	35 Mbps
Shadow	5 Mbps	25 Mbps
Nvidia GeForce NOW	15 Mbps	25 Mbps

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Number of subscribers

BT (PlusNet, EE) 9,300,000
Sky Broadband 6,200,000
Virgin Media 5,365,400
TalkTalk(on-net) 4,220,000
Vodafone UK 838,000
Glide 400,000
Post Office 400,000
Zen Internet 150,000
Ask4 130,000
KCOM 126,900

INCREASE BROADBAND SPEED Tips and Guides

Speed Tests.

https://speedtest.net

https://speedof.me/

https://testmy.net/

https://speedtest.xfinity.com/

http://internethealthtest.org/ 

https://fast.com

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest?httpsok=0

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Remember

• Many ISPs (Sky, BT, EE, PlusNet, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Zen) use the BT/Openreach network to deliver broadband services. You might change providers within this group but you’ll be using the same physical infrastructure. after any change of ISP. Changing ISPs within this group will only change the company to whom you pay the monthly bill and from whom you get customer service and technical support.
• If your ISP is an AltNet provider (usually of FTTP services) then you’ll probably need to work with your altnet ISP.
  AltNets include B4RN, Cityfibre, Gigaclear, Hyperoptic, CommunityFibre, G.Network, toob and many more.
• If your ISP is Virgin Media then VM is the only provider of your cable service and you’ll need to rely on VM to resolve any issues. 

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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am7xT-zU1Q0

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