Does the average household need more than 100/20 broadband?

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KrazyKid

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#323186 4-Nov-2025 10:57

I see that thanks to Chorus Speed upgrades the standard plan is 500/100 and the lite is 100/20.

I'm about to step down to 100/20 to see how it goes but this has led me to wonder do most households need 500/100 speed?

We have 2 teenage kids and two adults. We stream TV music youtube and do a bit of gaming. downloading and general browsing.
Also have a range of smart devices (lighbulbs, power switches vaccum etc etc)

We must be fairly average in our needs.
I don't see that needing 500/100 speed.

Am I missing something or is it that if most of NZ realises this they would cut there plan costs from $90 to $60 a month and take a 1/3 off Chorus's revenue?

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#3430697 4-Nov-2025 11:07

I expect 100/20 is fine for most homes i.e. streaming TV, web browsing, email, WFH. I have no idea about online gaming but guess it is more about latency that rate.

4K Ultra HD streaming video is about about 20Mbps.

mrgsm021

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#3430698 4-Nov-2025 11:11

Personally for a 2 person household, 100/20 should be sufficient and for 4, I'd go with 500/100 but give 100/20 a try and see how you go then upgrade if necessary.

We are a household of 4 and have gig fibre (discounted through work), daughter is likely to move out soonish so maybe downgrade to 500/100 then.

SpartanVXL

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#3430752 4-Nov-2025 13:25

With four people you may get some complaints from the teens if they do any gaming while any streaming is going on.

4k video streams at decent bitrate can be around 20Mb/s. If your teens are like the generalisation of gen z then they may be prone to doing things simultaneously e.g. twitch+youtube+discord in the background while gaming.

Also if anybody starts downloading at full speed it will affect everyone else for however long it takes to finish(which will be longer on 100/20). Look at QoS or queue/buffer features on your router to avoid this.

Tinkerisk

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#3430756 4-Nov-2025 13:38

Think back to the coronavirus pandemic.

When two adults and two children need to have a video conference at the same time (for work and school), 20 Mbps upload speed is simply not enough. Regardless of the technical specifications, I would prefer 200/100 Mb/s (if that is available in your area).

For two adults, 100/50 Mb/s is sufficient.

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KiwiSurfer

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#3430757 4-Nov-2025 13:40

I switched to 100/20 a few months ago without telling my husband as a test to see whether he'd notice.

The timing couldn't have been worse, since only a few days after I made the switch one of the game he plays pushed out a massive multi-GB update which took a good while to download -- so he did notice!

The following month we reverted back to 500/100.

Although to be for for day to day usage it was not a big deal.

At the end of the day comes down to how much it's worth to you. For us a little bit extra is worth being able to download large files quickly. 500 seems to the sweet spot where it's not too expensive and still fast enough that we're not waiting around for game update etc.

I recommend a RSP who makes it easy to do the change - Quic was quick to downgrade and upgrade so was a easy experiment.

Tinkerisk

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#3430758 4-Nov-2025 13:46

KiwiSurfer:

I switched to 100/20 a few months ago without telling my husband as a test to see whether he'd notice.

That would be reason enough for me to get a divorce. 😁

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richms

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#3430759 4-Nov-2025 13:49

"Does the average car need more than 50kw?" "Does the average stereo need more than 5 watts"? "Does the average TV need more than 40 inches?"

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timmmay

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#3430811 4-Nov-2025 14:11

I could probably manage fine with 100 / 50 working from home and doing general tech stuff, but 100 / 20 might be slightly limiting at times. I probably won't bother changing down from 500 / 100 as having faster downloads is often handy. Most people though 100 / 20 should be more than enough.

I notice that 2degrees say 100 / 20 is "Good for basic browsing / checking email". That's bordering on deceptive. 100Mbps is probably enough for 10 simultaneous 1080p streams. Maybe that text is left over from when the plan was slower, but that should be changed.

Mehrts

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#3430820 4-Nov-2025 14:33

I have VPN access to my home, so I used to be on the gigabit plans just for the extra upload speed because 20mbps was going to be a huge bottleneck otherwise.

As soon as the 300/100 plan was introduced I opted for that instead, since it better reflected my use-case and was cheaper, so win-win.

Now it's 500/100, that's just a nice bonus really.

However I'd say the general punter won't have a VPN for remote acess to their home so I'd almost say that 100/20 would be sufficient for many of their needs for the majority of the time. The only exception would be when downloading huge files (windows updates, game installs etc).

yitz

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#3430824 4-Nov-2025 14:40

It's a shame because when UFB launched it was 30/10 and 100/50 and the price of 100/50 was supposed to come down to that of 30/10 by the end of 2019 / completion of roll out. Chorus stepped in and offered to upgrade 30/10 to 100/20 a few years in and then the government agreed to 100/20 being the "anchor service" speed in late 2018. So Chorus somehow managed to negotiate a decrease in upload speed in that time. 👎

tripper1000

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#3430831 4-Nov-2025 14:59

The "standard" plan is for "average" households.

The light plan is for light households. I'd call a light household a pair of retirees.

However:

1) ISP's will usually let you switch to a more expensive plan no questions asked, so it would be "free" to try the slower speed.

2) If you are like many "average" households and use WiFi exclusively (eg, don't have Ethernet connected devices), and your router is sub optimally located (e.g. are you using wireless range extenders?), then WiFi is probably the weakest link and you could be wasting money by paying for more fibre than your WiFi can deliver.

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MikeB4

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#3430834 4-Nov-2025 15:16

We currently have a 900/500 plan. I looked at the options a while back and the difference between our current plan and the 500/100 was only a few dollars per month, less than two cups of coffee. Wifi on most of our devices is close to plan speed so figured the hassle wasn't worth it

Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.

Bung

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#3430887 4-Nov-2025 15:55

Depending on the ISP it could be swings and roundabouts eg go slower plan and get data limit or lose Netflix.The end result is almost same $.

OldGeek

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#3430892 4-Nov-2025 16:30

On Quic the 500/100 plan is $85 per month. 100/20 is $65. I pushed the button to downgrade to 100/20. No-one (household of 4 but my wife and I pay for the internet) noticed including the gamer/teenager. I did not notice either until I wanted to create a USB image of Windows 11 to do a fresh install - it was only half done when I finished my coffee ;-)

We have 1 TV in the house that is 100% streamed, but only my wife and I use it. My daughter works from home spending most of her time on the phone using a headset plugged into a laptop that connects to an Aussie landline through her Aussie-based employer. So I am mildly irritated to have wasted all that money on speed I did not really need.

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cddt

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#3430894 4-Nov-2025 16:33

tripper1000:

2) If you are like many "average" households and use WiFi exclusively (eg, don't have Ethernet connected devices), and your router is sub optimally located (e.g. are you using wireless range extenders?), then WiFi is probably the weakest link and you could be wasting money by paying for more fibre than your WiFi can deliver.

This probably applies to at least 95% of households...

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