How much internet speed does your home actually need?

The most common question we hear from new customers is simple: "Which speed should I buy?" The honest answer is that it depends on what your household does at the same time, not on the number of people living there. Streaming, video calls and large downloads each need a known amount of bandwidth, so you can add them up.

What common activities need

Notice that a group video call needs 3.0 Mbps of upload. Upload is the side of your connection that people forget about, and it is the reason a household can stream happily and still have a choppy meeting.

A worked example: a family of four

Imagine two people streaming HD at the same time, and one parent on a 1080p Zoom group call for work. That is 2 × 3 Mbps for the streams plus 2.5 Mbps downloading the call, so about 8.5 Mbps in use. Phones, laptops and smart-TV apps running updates in the background add more, so leave 30 to 50 percent of headroom. That brings you to roughly 11 to 13 Mbps.

If the same household moves to 4K streaming on two screens, the two streams alone need 30 Mbps. The number you choose should cover your busiest evening, not your quietest morning.

Matching it to a plan

• Bronze, 20 Mbps (KES 2,000 per month) or Silver, 30 Mbps (KES 2,500): one or two people, everyday browsing, HD streaming.
• Gold, 35 Mbps (KES 3,000 per month) or Platinum, 40 Mbps (KES 3,500): a busy home with several HD streams and working-from-home video calls.
• 50 Mbps (KES 4,000 per month): power users, smart homes and households that stream in 4K.

All of our residential plans include unlimited data, so the only thing to size is speed. If you are unsure, use the speed calculator on our home page: it uses the same simple rule of thumb described here, and you can change the numbers to match your household.