Nowadays most homes has access to advertised broadband speeds of 8Mbps or higher, but is it worth paying extra for 16Mbps, 24Mbps or 50Mbps? Here are a few factors that may influence your choice.

Firstly, different internet applications have different bandwidth requirements. Emailing, basic browsing and text chatting can easily performed with much less than 1Mbps. However downloading music or webcam chatting will definitely benefit from 2Mbps or higher.

Watching streaming video, such as 4OD or YouTube would require 2Mbps as a good minimum but high definition streaming video would need something around 4Mb or higher. Once you start downloading videos the speed you need depends on your patience. Whereas a 2Mbps connection might require an hour for a video to download a 50Mbps connection would perform the same task within one or two minutes.

Often forgotten but equally important is the number of users who will be using the broadband connection. If it is just for your personal use you could probably just go by the above guidelines. However if you are a family of five you may want to multiply the above guidelines by two or three, if you are in shared student accommodation 50Mbps may be the only sensible solution.

Finally remember that you are unlikely to get the advertised speed. If you subscribe to a 24Mbps ADSL+ connection you could very well be stuck with 6Mbps or 7Mbps. Swap the ADSL for the cable solution delivered by Virgin Media Broadband and you may find that a 20Mbps package delivers 16Mbps or 18Mbps.