Ask HN: Downgrading my Internet speed to match the Speed Test and save money?

#1

Post by gmen » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 10:13 PM UTC

I am in the SF Bay area, customer at Comcast. I pay for 150mbps (download) each month, but speed tests show my current download speed to be around 25mbps.

If I downgrade my Comcast plan to something like 75mbps, do you know if it will have an impact on my current speed?

Re: Ask HN: Downgrading my Internet speed to match the Speed Test and save money?

#2

Post by dozzie » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 10:43 PM UTC

I don't see why you want to downgrade your connection speed when you only have millibits per second, when twenty years ago it was already kilobits per second.

In case you simply can't use proper units, you need to ask yourself: do you even use that 25Mbps? For what?

Re: Ask HN: Downgrading my Internet speed to match the Speed Test and save money?

#3

Post by wmf » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 11:07 PM UTC

I was in a similar situation with Time Warner; I have a 160 Mbps modem and was on a 100 Mbps plan but was only getting 50, so I downgraded to the 50 plan. You should probably downgrade and investigate whether the bottleneck is your modem or congestion.

Re: Ask HN: Downgrading my Internet speed to match the Speed Test and save money?

#4

Post by larrymcp » Sun, Jul 12, 2015, 1:01 AM UTC

Just out of curiosity, did you call Comcast to ask them about the problem? I would think you'd want to see if they could repair something to get the speed up to 150 Mbps.