Reno Charlton, award-winning writer, shares her financial expertise as a contributing columnist for www.credit-card-comparison-online.co.uk and www.personal-loan-comparison-online.co.uk.
More and more of us these days have become reliant on our broadband connections for all sorts of things, whether it is for working from home or enjoying the education benefits and resources that you get online or whether it is to surf the Internet, socialise, or even do some shopping. However, one thing that can make your Internet experience more of a frustrating inconvenience rather than an enjoyable experience is slow connection speeds.
The first thing that may spring to mind if your broadband connection is slow is that you need to get a higher specification broadband service. However, before you rush off and do this you should bear in mind that there are other factors that can affect the speed of your broadband connection, and this may have nothing to do with the actual service itself, which means that upgrading to a faster speed may not actually benefit you but will still cost you more money each month.
Firstly, it is important to bear in mind that the actual speed that you achieve from your broadband provider will rarely be the headline speed that is advertised. In fact, recent research by the communications regulator Ofcom has shown on average consumers that are on 8Mbps broadband services receive only around half of that speed. Remember to check and look around to find out who is the UK's fastest broadband provider.
It is a good idea to contact your provider if your connection is continually slow, as there may be an issue or there may be a quick and easy remedy that helps to speed things up. However, remember that it can be a wide range of factors that affect your speed. For example, if you are using a wireless router, as many people do these days, the position of the router could affect the speed, and simple repositioning could make a huge difference.
Also, remember that the speed of your broadband service can be affected by the times that you use it. For instance, if you use the service during peak times, which is generally late afternoon and in the evening the speed tends to be slower than other times of the day simply because there is more Internet traffic all trying to use the Internet at the same time.
Remember too that there are certain applications that can run in the background on your PC, and can not only slow you down but can also risk using up your download allowance. Make sure that programmes such as BBC iPlayer and the like are not running in the background, as this can also have a big impact on your speed.
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