Downgrading from Full Fibre 900

[wesley]

I am coming to the end of my 24 month contract at £69pcm.  Although full speeds are recorded to the router, wifi speeds are generally in the range of 75-150 Mbps.  This includes standing next to router with mobile and confirmed by Ookla / fast.com for wifi speeds.  I also have 3 wifi discs dotted around the house.

If I downgrade to 300 FF, can I expect a corresponding significant drop off in wifi connection  - or does anyone have experience that wifi would hold up in the 75-100 range with a 300Mbps service.

Am looking to reduce the monthly cost and also account for the fact my son who games/streams has now gone off to Uni ha ha.  We only use wifi for wfh / facetiming and firestick streaming - sky q boxes are hard wired.

Thanks

[rbz5416]

Speed to the router & across WiFi are independent. Although you obviously can't get a higher speed Internet connection than whatever your package delivers. From your stated use you could probably safely drop to 100Mb.

[licquorice]

WiFi speed is totally independent of broadband speed. They are 2 totally separate links in a chain. Total speed will be at the speed of the slowest link.

Typing as @rbz5416  posted

[iniltous]

It doesn’t follow that if you reduced your FTTP ‘speed’ by 2/3rds that your WiFi performance would also decrease by 2/3rds, it doesn’t work like that.

TBH , I don’t think 300Mb is an offered speed by BT anymore, so  it’s probably a 500Mb service you would select , but as already stated , you probably would be better off with 100Mb ( which on FTTP is actually 150Mb ) which will probably be more than adequate for your needs, and on single WiFi devices you likely wouldn’t notice any difference to when you had 900Mb , unless you have many devices constantly making large bandwidth demands

[HHGTTG]

Can someone explain why, when people buy these expensive Fibre packages they often don't get anywhere near the speeds they expect?

[Keith_Beddoe]

Its because they do not take into consideration the weakest link in the chain, their own internal network, that is what normally causes the disappointing performance.

Find what your local network is capable of first, then find a package that matches that, probably 100-200 Mbs in most cases. Do you really need more that about 20mbs to a phone or tablet?

[licquorice]

Mainly, folks have unrealistic expectations of WiFi.

[HHGTTG]

Precisely but so many people have upwards of 50+ devices connected including cameras and all sorts of Wireless Smart stuff. I can't abide that to be honest but each to their own, I suppose.

[Keith_Beddoe]

All sharing the same wireless bandwidth and competing for channel occupancy. Overall, I would expect the actual throughput on a specific channel to be poor, especially if there are adjacent properties using the same channel.

[rbz5416]

I doubt is as many as 10% with a 900Mb connection need it for any reason other than because they can.