Signal Winter 2017 Newsletter

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How much speed you need depends on your answers
Questions to AskWhen
Picking an Internet Plan
There’s no single “best speed” when
it comes to internet service, which
is why choosing a plan can be confusing.
The speeds that work fine for your
neighbor might not be even close to what
your household needs, since there are
many factors to consider and differences
in how people use the internet.
Before we get to the questions, let’s
review the meaning of bandwidth
and how it relates to internet speed.
Bandwidth refers to the amount of
data that can be transferred over an
internet connection per second. It’s
usually measured in Mbps (megabits
per second), and every internet plan
has a specified maximum bandwidth,
such as 50 Mbps or 200 Mbps. This
bandwidth is shared by all the users
and connected devices in a household.
It may be helpful to think of bandwidth
as a highway with vehicles traveling on
it; the highway is the internet connection
and the vehicles are the data. The
wider the highway, the more vehicles
can travel on it at one time and the
faster they get to their destinations. The
same principle applies to data—the
more bandwidth, the more information
that can be transferred within a given
amount of time.
To help you figure out the best internet
plan for you, answer these questions:
What are your current download and
upload speeds?
Download speed is the speed at which
Test your download and
upload speed at