The real issue: upload speed
Consumer broadband is designed around the assumption that you download far more than you upload. For remote workers it is often not true at all. Video calls send and receive data roughly symmetrically. Screen sharing is almost entirely upload. Large file transfers, cloud backups, and submitting work to shared drives all require significant upload capacity.
On a standard FTTC connection, you might get 70Mbps download but only 15Mbps upload. That 15Mbps gets shared between your video call, your cloud sync, and everything else on your network simultaneously. It can become a bottleneck faster than you would expect, especially in households where multiple people are working from home at the same time.
What do video calls actually require?
Zoom recommends 3.8Mbps upload for 1080p HD video. Microsoft Teams is similar. A single video call is not demanding, but add a second person on their own call plus cloud backups and normal browsing, and a 15Mbps upload connection starts to feel strained.
Reliability over raw speed
A 50Mbps connection that drops for five minutes twice a day is worse for work purposes than an 80Mbps connection that is completely solid. Connection stability, which full fibre generally delivers better than copper-based connections, often matters more than the headline speed figure.
What we recommend
For a single remote worker doing regular video calls: full fibre at 100Mbps or more with 20Mbps upload will be genuinely comfortable. For households where multiple people work from home simultaneously: 200Mbps or more with near-symmetrical upload speeds is where the significant quality-of-life improvement happens.
