Gigabit is not a personality

Gigabit is a tidy word. It fits on a van. It sounds like progress. It is also, for a four-person house that streams and does homework, often a number they will never see at the sofa because the hub is in a cupboard and two of the laptops are five years old. Full fibre can still be the right technology. The top tier is optional.

Buy the technology that will last. Rent the speed you can use.

Buy the technology, rent the tier

Full fibre is the thing that lasts: upload, reliability, a path off copper. Gigabit is a product code. You can have full fibre at 150 Mbps and be better served than a congested cable gigabit. You can also have a 900 Mbps line and a 200 Mbps sofa. Suitability is people and walls. Vanity is a round number.

The vanity gap

There is always a gap between the test next to the hub and the sofa. On full fibre that gap is usually radio. On a congested cable node it can also be the street. Paying to close a radio gap with a higher product tier is like buying a faster car to solve a driveway. Move the hub. Then, if you still want the round number and the year still works, take it without mythology.

The three-pound test

If the 900 is £3 more than the 150 on the same plant and term, take the 900 and stop performing. If it is £15 more, name the application. Overnight backups, a busy house, a hobby that actually crosses 200 Mbit — those are sentences. A speed-test screenshot is not. Like-for-like is the method; vanity is the rest.