Choosing the Right Broadband Plan

With over a dozen broadband Internet plans offering a wide spectrum of prices and speeds, consumers may find it a challenge to choose the right plan.

A basic 512kbps line works fine for regular e-mail and Web browsing but tech-savvy households with multiple members engaging in huge file downloads, online games, video streaming and more will need a lot more bandwidth. With over a dozen broadband Internet plans offering a wide spectrum of prices and speeds, consumers may find it a challenge to choose the right plan.

To help consumers make an informed choice, IDA monitors and publishes the performance of broadband plans here. There are three main indicators to look for - price, throughput and latency.

It is important to understand that the advertised speed only show the speed of your "last mile" connection. If the networks are roads and the data your car, then your advertised speed only show your speed from the side road at your home to the main road. This may be fast but if the rest of your journey is congested, your overall traveling time is still slowed down. A better measurement of how well your line performs is therefore to look at its throughput, which resembles the car's speed for the entire journey. A higher throughput is better.

Latency is important for online games, Net telephony and other applications which will suffer quality degradation if the data packets take too long to return. The smaller the latency, the better is your experience.