Is 4mb broadband fast enough?

[HotSprocket]

I am on virgin with a cable but am moving to a house that doesn't have the wiring so would need to go through a router.
At the moment we get 10mb but the router only gives 4mb.
Would i notice much difference going down to 4mb? Just general internet use really and a little bit of downloading.

I doubt you would really notice. When ADSL (on BT lines) first came out, it was limited to 500 kbps. I get anything from 160 kbps to 1500 kbps (mostly 250 to 500) so you'd be getting several times that.

You should have no problem with downloading and general use. Where I cannot stream video very often (YouTube and iPlayer etc sit buffering after playing 5 seconds of video so I have to download anything I want to 'watch', you should not have that happen (unless you are doing both downloading and watching some video at the same time, and then only if the downloading is running above 50% of the traffic on your connection.

Many rural users cannot get 2 Mbps, but 'get by' and I really doubt you'll have problems.

Could be different if there were 2 (+2 teens) all hammering your connection at once!

Thanks, sounds like it would be okay.
Would cost us £90 to cancel so i think best to just go with it!

That's quite a chunk of cash - Ofcom is in the process of restricting the amount that can be charged as 'penalty fees' for cancelling. In my case I'm on an 18 month contract with BT for the phone line, with a charge of 7.50 per month if I wished to cancel early.

Now, admittedly in my case the line was installed for free (saving 125 pounds), and my only other commitment is to make 10 calls a month (which can be the free ones at the weekend). On the downside, however, is the fact the line has been down for as many as 5 days at a time about 3 times in the past 4 months, no dial tone, no ADSL.

In your case I assume you are going to be getting Virgin Media service via a BT line rather than their cable, so when does your contract end? You might find that there are alternative ISPs which offer anything from 4 to 20 Mbps. Some are upgrading customers to 'up to 20 Mbps' for free, but clearly you have a number of months to go before you will be in a position to consider alternatives.

You might also have been using a virginmedia mail address, so if I were you I would get yourself a GoogleMail account, so you can switch ISP anytime you wish in the future!