UK Broadband speed

Just wanted to ask what a 'good' speed is in the UK, excluding fibre optic as i cant get that in my new house
Also will they tell me an estimate of expected speeds before i purchase said broadband?

 

Through ADSL telephone lines the highest I heard is around 20 MB but this is only theoretical though, it is largely dependent on the location of your house to the exchange. Unless you happen to live right next to one the chances are you going to see a lot less than advertised, it gets worse the further out you are. My office is based in a busy City Centre and we get approximately 14 MB out of a 20 MB line. Before I had fibre optic cable in my house I was only getting 3 MB out of 8 MB at best, to add insult my Uncle who just lives down the road from where I am was on a different line exchange and got 12 MB out of 20 MB.

Normally sites like O2 can give you a speed estimation before you order a broadband connection so I would check on that first, just put your phone number and postcode to get a rough idea. You may want a browse on SamKnows to see where is your nearest telephone exchange to your house, remember the nearer it is and less crowded the better.

 

Thank you very much
Sky just generic first one i picked showed estimated speed 0f 4.5-8.5Mb. for a 4 person household with, 4 people who do alot of streaming/online gaming ect, will this speed suffice?
Even though it looks like we probably have little option of getting better anwyays just want to know in advance how 'good' relative to our fairly high useage it is.

 

If it's simultaneously then it would be pushing it, I know from experience what it's like sharing a 3 MB connection with 4 people and it's generally not feasible. Gaming would not be smooth (laggy) and streamers will have to endure a lot of buffering, luckily for us we have fibre optic cable available in our area so we went with a 50MB connection and most of the problems was gone after. I would say 8 MB would just about be OK, less than 4 MB and you will experience problems based on your usage.

 

Thank you very usefull replies, glad to know it should be 'useable' at least.
Im so clueless on broadband speeds but i guess well take what we can and be hopeful our actual speed will be close to their estimate.
Thanks for your help.

 

Whatever speed you will have, I would stay away from BT...