Home Support Centre Broadband What are upload and download speeds?

What are upload and download speeds?

Download speed is the speed at which data comes into your premises and that's important for everything from browsing web pages to downloading software updates.

The Internet is not all about consuming content and if you want to produce and share content then upload speed is important. For example you may wish to upload a video to a video-sharing site, or you may run a game server at home. Video chat is a good example of where you need to send data as quickly as you receive it and so upload speed is important.