The advertising of the Internet providers shows a direction: even faster, even better – even more expensive. Because fast connections bring more sales. If you don’t need the fastest connection, you can save a lot of money. Connections with 16 Mbit/s are at the lower end of the scale. You can get these for 25 to 35 euros a month, gigabit connections are around twice as expensive.
The slow connections are not suitable for every user, and the providers are sometimes stingy when it comes to additional services such as telephony flat rates. Before booking, you should determine exactly which service you need – and get it according to the conditions. There are also differences between the offers in the contract period, because the providers also like to sell their cheap offers with a long contract.
Away from the VDSL, TV cable and fiber optic expansion areas, ADSL connections with a maximum of 16 Mbit/s are still the order of the day. And often only between 10 and 14 Mbit/s are achieved on such connections because the telephone line to the exchange is no longer available. In such cases, it can be worthwhile to measure the actual speed during operation. If the provider does not meet its speed promises, you can at least reduce the monthly price.
- Landline connections are already available for less than 20 euros per month.
- 16 Mbit/s is sufficient for many applications.
- With short contract terms, you remain optimally flexible.
But you can also get the slow connections where the Internet is well developed. If you are connected to a VDSL distribution box with a short telephone line, a connection will bring the promised data rates even with the old ADSL technology. Cable connections, which in most cases are designed for 1 Gbit/s downstream and 50 Mbit/s upstream, deliver 16 Mbit/s with links. And some fiber optic providers would rather sell customers 16 Mbit/s for little money than not doing business with them at all.
If you have the choice between different connection technologies, you should reach for the fiber optic connection, because it offers the best connection stability, the lowest latency and comparatively low power consumption for the modem. If fiber optics is not your thing, cable is the second choice, because it definitely delivers the promised data rates. DSL is the last choice because you cannot rule out that the provider uses old ADSL technology that does not achieve the promised data rate.
If you enter the address of the connection, you will receive detailed and binding information about which connection variants are available.
For which 16 Mbit/s is enough
16 or 20 Mbps? That sounds like little, but it is sufficient for most applications without any problems. The low data rate is most noticeable with large downloads. Updates for operating systems can sometimes have several gigabytes. It takes more than eight minutes to download one gigabyte on a 16 Mbit/s connection. In the much slower transmission direction, for example when you upload holiday photos to a photo book provider, you need a lot more patience: With 2.5 Mbit/s, a gigabyte is sent after 53 minutes, with 1 Mbit/s it even takes over two hours .
Streaming videos in simple HD resolution is no problem. Depending on the service, you need between 5 and 8 Mbit/s for this. A 16 Mbit/s connection is sufficient for this. However, it can get tight with two streams at the same time, for example if one stream is running in the living room and one in the children’s room. The situation is basically bad with 4K videos (UHD): Here the connection has to deliver 15 to 40 Mbit/s, so you need at least a 50 Mbit/s connection for a UHD stream, but even that is enough for several simultaneous streams not yet.
Video conferencing services are much more economical with bandwidth. Most systems already run smoothly with 2 or 3 Mbit/s downstream. The upstream is more critical, which is very economical with many cheap connections. Video conferences usually still work with 1 or 2 Mbit/s, but often only with considerable reductions in the quality of the transmission. If two partners use video conferences at the same time in their home office, a 16 Mbit/s connection is therefore usually no longer sufficient.
