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. IMDA oversees the regulation of broadband Internet plans and services, including the Wireless@SG network. Discover how IMDA can help you choose the right broadband 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, IMDA monitors and publishes the performance of broadband plans here. There are three main indicators to look for - price, throughput, and latency.

Understanding the true performance of your Internet connection can be tricky. Advertised speeds only measure the speed of the last mile connection, which is like the speed from the side road at your home to the main road. This may seem fast, but if the rest of your journey is congested, your overall travel time will still be slowed down. To get a better picture of your connection's performance, it's important to look at its throughput, which is like the car's speed for the entire journey. In other words, higher throughput means better performance.

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 your experience.