Per-activity requirements
- Streaming HD (1080p): 5 Mbps · 4K UHD: 15–25 Mbps per stream
- Video calls: 1.5 Mbps up/down for standard, 3–4 Mbps for 1080p group calls
- Cloud gaming: 15–35 Mbps with latency under 40 ms — latency matters more than bandwidth
- Online gaming (locally installed): 3–6 Mbps, but sensitive to jitter and packet loss
- Large downloads and cloud backups: whatever you can get; 200 Mbps moves a 60 GB game in about 45 minutes
- Smart home devices: 1–2 Mbps each, and dozens add up
Add the household up
Two 4K streams (50 Mbps), one HD stream (5), a video call (4) and background updates (10) total about 70 Mbps of sustained demand with peaks above 100. A 200–300 Mbps plan covers that comfortably; a 100 Mbps plan works if downloads are scheduled rather than simultaneous with streaming.
Upload is the quiet bottleneck
A 10 Mbps upload takes 13 minutes for 1 GB and 2 hours 13 minutes for 10 GB. Cloud backups, video calls, live streaming, remote desktop and sending video for work all depend on it. If any of those matter, prioritise a plan with 20–50 Mbps upload — typically fibre or newer cable standards.
Latency, jitter and Wi-Fi
Bandwidth is only one axis. Gaming and calls need low latency (under 30 ms to a nearby server) and low jitter; satellite and congested mobile links fail on these even at high bandwidth. Wi-Fi adds variability: 5 GHz at close range behaves like Ethernet, while 2.4 GHz through two walls can perform worse than the plan suggests. For critical work, use a cable.