Sierra Tel

Is Your Internet Plan Sized to Support Multiple Users and Multiple Devices?

Does your family do a lot of gaming and streaming movies through Netflix, Amazon or Hulu? Are there multiple devices in your household including laptops, tablets, gaming consoles and smartphones? Have you noticed your Internet speeds seem to be going down as your usage goes up? If you answered “Yes” to these questions, you’ll want to consider getting more bandwidth (and corresponding Internet speeds) to meet your growing needs.

Many Sierra Tel customers are saturating their bandwidth because multiple devices in their homes are connected wirelessly to the Internet. This makes it seem as though their Internet service is running slow when it’s actually being maxed out.

Households with several family members accessing the Internet simultaneously will be hap­piest with one of our higher-level plans that provide greater bandwidth and faster speeds:

• Gold plan: over 20 Mbps download and over 2 Mbps upload for $69.95/month

• Silver Plan: over 12 Mbps download and over 2 Mbps upload for $59.95/month

What exactly is bandwidth? The term refers to how much data you can send through a network or modem connection. Bandwidth is usually measured in bits per second, such as 10 Mbps (10 million bits per second). You can think of bandwidth as a highway with cars traveling on it; the highway is the network connection and the cars are the data. The wider the highway, the more cars can travel on it at one time and the faster they get to their desti­nations. The same principle applies to data — the more bandwidth, the more information that can be transferred within a given amount of time.

As you use more Internet-connected devices, and use them for more data-intensive applications, it’s important to make sure your bandwidth increases as well. For help determining which Internet plan is right for your household, call us today at 559-683-4611 or 209-966-3636.

Visit SierraTel.com today, for more information.