The Cord Cutter's Guide to Internet Speed

Cord cutting has gone from a fringe movement to a mainstream trend. An estimated 5 million American households have already dropped cable or satellite TV in favor of streaming services, and millions more are considering the switch. The math is compelling: a cable TV subscription averages $80 to $100 per month, while a combination of Netflix ($8), Hulu Plus ($8), and Amazon Prime ($99/year) costs under $25 per month.

But here's what many people discover after canceling cable: when all your entertainment comes over the internet, your bandwidth requirements go up significantly. If your internet plan isn't up to the task, you'll trade cable bills for buffering.

How Cord Cutting Changes Your Bandwidth Needs

When you have cable TV, your television content arrives over a separate coaxial connection that doesn't affect your internet bandwidth. Each channel is its own signal on the cable, and you can watch as many TVs as you want without impacting internet performance.

Once you switch to streaming, every screen watching video is pulling from your internet connection. Instead of TV being a separate infrastructure, it's now competing with everything else you do online — web browsing, email, social media, online gaming, video calls, and cloud storage.

This is a fundamental shift in how your household uses bandwidth, and it requires rethinking your internet plan.

Bandwidth Requirements per Stream

Here's what the major streaming services require in 2014:

| Service | SD Quality | HD Quality | Recommended | |---------|-----------|-----------|-------------| | Netflix | 3 Mbps | 5 Mbps | 5 Mbps | | Hulu Plus | 1.5 Mbps | 3 Mbps | 3 Mbps | | Amazon Instant Video | 1 Mbps | 3.5 Mbps | 3.5 Mbps | | HBO GO | 3 Mbps | 5 Mbps | 5 Mbps | | YouTube HD | 2.5 Mbps | 4 Mbps | 4 Mbps |

These are per-stream requirements. Two people watching Netflix in HD simultaneously need 10 Mbps just for the video streams.

Calculating Your Household Needs

Here's a formula that works well for estimating your total bandwidth requirement:

(Number of simultaneous HD streams x 5 Mbps) + 5 Mbps overhead = minimum speed

The 5 Mbps overhead accounts for other internet activities happening at the same time — someone browsing the web, phones syncing in the background, smart home devices, and so on.

Example calculations:

• Single person, one TV: (1 x 5) + 5 = 10 Mbps minimum
• Couple, two TVs: (2 x 5) + 5 = 15 Mbps minimum
• Family of four, three TVs: (3 x 5) + 5 = 20 Mbps minimum
• Large family, four screens: (4 x 5) + 5 = 25 Mbps minimum

We recommend adding a 25 percent buffer above these minimums to account for the fact that your actual speeds are often lower than your plan's advertised maximum — especially during peak evening hours when everyone in the neighborhood is streaming.

The Evening Peak Problem

Here's something cable TV veterans don't think about: when millions of cord cutters come home from work and start streaming their shows, internet traffic spikes. Cable internet customers in particular may see their speeds drop during the 7 PM to 11 PM window.

This matters more for cord cutters because that's exactly when you're most likely to be streaming. If your connection regularly drops below the thresholds above during peak hours, you'll experience buffering and quality drops at the worst possible time.

Run speed tests during evening hours to see what your actual performance looks like when it matters most.

Choosing the Right Plan

Based on the calculations above, here are our recommendations:

Minimum for cord cutting: 15 Mbps. This supports one or two HD streams with some headroom. It's tight for a family but workable for a single person or couple.

Sweet spot: 25 Mbps. Comfortable for most households with two or three screens plus other internet usage. This is the plan tier most cord cutters should target.

Power user: 50+ Mbps. If you have four or more people streaming simultaneously, if you game online, or if you work from home, go higher. The price difference between 25 and 50 Mbps is often only $10 to $15 per month.

The Bottom Line on Savings

Even after upgrading your internet plan, cord cutting typically saves money. Here's the math for a typical household:

| Expense | Cable TV Household | Cord Cutting Household | |---------|-------------------|----------------------| | Cable TV | $90/month | $0 | | Internet (15 Mbps) | $40/month | — | | Internet (25 Mbps) | — | $55/month | | Netflix | — | $8/month | | Hulu Plus | — | $8/month | | Amazon Prime | — | $8/month | | Total | $130/month | $79/month |

That's over $600 per year in savings, even with a more expensive internet plan and three streaming services. If you were bundling internet and TV, your internet-only price may change — check with your provider.

Tips for Cord Cutters

A few practical suggestions to make the transition smoother:

Get a good router. Your router is the bottleneck between your fast internet connection and your devices. A modern dual-band 802.11n or 802.11ac router handles multiple streams much better than older equipment.

Use wired connections where possible. If your streaming device is near your router, an Ethernet cable provides a more stable connection than Wi-Fi. Smart TVs and streaming boxes like Roku and Apple TV all have Ethernet ports.

Stagger your streaming. If bandwidth is tight, avoid having every screen streaming HD simultaneously. Watching one show live while downloading another for later viewing is easier on your connection.

Monitor your usage. Some internet providers have data caps. Streaming HD video uses about 3 GB per hour. A household streaming four hours per day uses roughly 360 GB per month — well within most caps, but worth tracking.

Cord cutting requires a shift in how you think about internet service. Your broadband connection is no longer just for browsing and email — it's your primary entertainment pipeline. Make sure it's up to the job.