When we sign up for a new Internet subscription, we always expect to get the maximum speed promised when signing the contract. Unfortunately, in Italy, internet connections are far from being fast, especially if we use old technologies such as ADSL.
In this guide we will show you how to understand if we are paying the promised speed or we can get much more, perhaps by subscribing to a different subscription in FTTC or better still in FTTH.
In this way we can pay the right amount to be able to navigate at the maximum speed possible for the house or the city in which we live, without having to give up anything.
We will show you how to measure the speed of our current Internet connection, how to check if fiber optic connections are available and how to sign a contract at the theoretical speed available at our home.
READ ALSO: Better internet offers, ADSL or Fiber, more convenient and reliable
Speed check in ADSL
Before we understand if we are paying too much, we must check the speed of our Internet connection in the home, by carrying out an advanced speed test on our line. To do this, get a laptop with an Ethernet port, turn off the Wi-Fi of the modem or router that we use to browse, disconnect any other Ethernet cable and, connected the notebook to the cable modem, open the web browser to browse the page offered by Speedtest.net.
To start the test, press the Go button in the center and wait patiently for the end of the measurements.
If we have an ADSL connection, the values to be kept under control for the Download value (i.e. the packages we download at all times) are the following:
- Below 4 Megabits per second : there are currently too few to be able to take advantage of all modern Web services, we can only surf the Internet sporadically and read e-mail. To absolutely avoid!
- Between 5 and 10 Megabits per second : this is the average speed of ADSL in Italy; we can use almost all Internet services, but we may encounter difficulties with video streaming, with some online games and in the use of multiple devices simultaneously.
- Over 10 Megabits per second : this is the ideal theoretical scenario with ADSL, although increasingly rare to obtain. We can use practically any web services on the Internet and get enough bandwidth also to play and to watch movies in streaming, without however exaggerating with the connected devices.
If we fall into the first two cases, perhaps the time has come to look around and see if it is possible to obtain superior connection technology (FTTC or FTTH) . If, on the other hand, we are in the last case (so we are lucky enough), we can also leave everything as it is and wait for the 10 Mega to be no longer enough to be able to surf the Internet from all devices.
In all cases we should not pay more than € 35 a month (home contract), to get an ADSL at these speeds: if the price is higher and we travel less than 10 Mega, it is a moral obligation to try to remedy by talking to the operator or moving to new technology. To learn more about new technologies, we invite you to read our guide Fibra VDSL, FTTC and FTTH: what differences and which is better "> Fibermap and choose, within the page, our region, province, municipality and finally enter our street (complete with house number); in the summary screen we will get information on all the technologies that can be activated.
Vdsl indicates the FTTC, while the voice FTTH indicates the direct fiber up to the house (we ignore the voice ILC fiber ).
Based on the answer we can know with good precision what type of technology we can activate at our home, also discovering the estimated average speed and the distance from the cabin (by clicking on the Detail button, present next to each enabled technology).
If we do not have fiber optic technologies, we carefully observe information relating to the ADSL section, in particular the ADSL ATM and ADSL ETH entries: if the SATURO entry is present, we will have a very low speed.
In addition to this site, we can also use the coverage controls offered by the various operators; below we have collected all the sites where to check with the main Italian operators.
- TIM
- Vodafone
- Fastweb
- Infostrada
- Tiscali
Average speed in Italy
The speed of our ADSL or optical fiber line is in line with the Italian average "> dedicated page of the Speedtest.net site.
So what is important to look at is the graph where you can see if an internet provider has improved or worsened the speed of your network. Even admitting that this detection system is not accurate, it still represents an excellent service for finding your way around and discovering good and bad providers.
In another article we then saw how to compare ADSL speeds of internet providers in Italy
If the Internet is slow, we can always adopt some tricks to improve internet speed as explained in the following articles:
- Improve internet speed in Windows 10
- speed up your internet connection with 5 Windows tricks
- Optimize wireless without slowing down your Wifi network and surf fast .
- What to do if the internet connection is slow
