Count the devices connected to your WiFi right now. There is probably your phone, laptop and TV, but keep going. Tablets, smart speakers, games consoles, doorbells, security cameras, watches and even appliances may be quietly sitting on the same network.
It is surprisingly easy for an ordinary home to end up with 15, 20 or more connected devices. Most of them are not particularly demanding on their own. The challenge comes when several people decide to actually use them at the same time.
This is the kind of household Hey!Broadband seems designed for. Its full fibre broadband packages focus on giving modern homes enough capacity for all the things happening online at once.
Your Internet Is Busier Than It Looks
A quiet house does not necessarily mean a quiet network.
Your phone could be uploading photos while a security camera sends footage to the cloud. A console might be downloading an update in standby mode. Someone upstairs could be watching YouTube while a smart TV downstairs streams a film.
Then you open your laptop for a video meeting.
Older broadband connections can start showing their limits when these activities overlap. Instead of blaming one particular device, it helps to look at the amount of traffic the whole household is creating.
Hey!Broadband uses Fibre to the Premises technology, commonly called FTTP. Fibre runs directly to the property, rather than relying on older copper cabling for the final stretch.
So, How Much Broadband Speed Is Enough?
There is no magic number because households use the internet differently.
For lighter browsing, social media and streaming, an entry-level full fibre package may already provide plenty of capacity. Things change when a home has several heavy users.
A household might regularly have:
- Two or three people streaming HD or 4K video
- Online gaming running alongside large downloads
- Video meetings happening during the working day
- Cloud backups and file uploads running in the background
- Numerous smart home devices connected around the clock
In that situation, having more bandwidth becomes useful rather than simply impressive on a speed test.
Hey!Broadband currently provides 150Mbps, 400Mbps and 900Mbps home broadband options. This gives households some room to choose according to their actual internet habits instead of automatically paying for the fastest connection.
Uploading Has Become Part of Everyday Internet Use
Download speed used to get nearly all the attention. Today, upload speed deserves a place in the conversation too.
Working from home means sending files and joining video calls. Security cameras may upload footage. Photos are backed up to cloud storage automatically. Anyone creating videos or other large files can be uploading gigabytes of data regularly.
That is one reason symmetrical broadband is useful. Hey!Broadband offers symmetrical speeds on its full fibre plans, so the potential upload speed matches the download speed.
It is the sort of feature you may barely notice until you have to send a huge folder while somebody else is on a call.
One Fast Router Cannot Defeat Every Wall
There is another side to running a connected home that raw internet speed cannot solve.
WiFi has to physically reach all those devices.
A smart doorbell near the front entrance, a TV upstairs and a laptop in a converted loft may all be competing for a signal coming from a router downstairs. Property size, walls and router placement can affect WiFi coverage significantly.
This is where Mesh WiFi can make more sense than simply increasing your broadband package. Hey!Broadband offers Nokia WiFi Beacons that can work together to extend wireless coverage around the home.
For a connected household, good coverage matters because smart devices are often spread everywhere rather than conveniently sitting next to the router.
A Connected Home Should Not Need Constant Managing
Nobody wants to become the household network administrator.
You should not have to ask someone to stop downloading a game because you have a meeting, or disconnect devices every time streaming starts buffering. The whole point of smart technology is convenience.
For homes where internet use has grown far beyond one computer and a television, Hey!Broadband offers the combination that matters most: full fibre speeds, strong upload capacity and options for extending WiFi around the property.
The real benefit is not having 900Mbps written on a broadband plan. It is having a house full of connected technology without constantly noticing that everything is sharing the same internet connection.