10Mbps Download Speed: What Can You Do With A 10Mbps Connection?

Download speeds of 10Mbps are available on Vodafone Unlimited mobile plans as well as ADSL home broadband connections.

In the UK, 10Mbps is the average speed of a standard home broadband connection (one that’s based on ADSL technology rather than fibre). It’s also the maximum download speed available when using a Vodafone Unlimited price plan in your mobile phone.

In this article, we’ll look at what you’re able to do with a download speed of 10Mbps. We’ll start by looking at 10Mbps price plans, both for your mobile phone and for your home broadband connection. We’ll then look at individual services like video calling, streaming and online gaming, asking what you’ll be able to do on a 10Mbps plan.

10Mbps Download Speed Plans

Vodafone Mobile Plans

If you’re choosing a Vodafone Unlimited price plan in the UK, it will have a maximum download speed of 10Mbps. According to Vodafone, this is approximately equivalent in speed to a basic 4G connection.

You can get the following Vodafone SIM cards with a download speed of up to 10Mbps:

Plan	Data	Monthly Cost (will rise each April by £1.80)
Unlimited Unlimited mins Unlimited texts	Unlimited data 100Mbps max speed	£23.00 per month 24 month contract	See deal
Unlimited Unlimited mins Unlimited texts	Unlimited data 100Mbps max speed	£27.00 per month 24 month contract	See deal
Unlimited Unlimited mins Unlimited texts	Unlimited data 10Mbps max speed	£30.00 per month 24 month contract	See deal
Unlimited Unlimited mins Unlimited texts	Unlimited data 100Mbps max speed	£30.00 per month 24 month contract	See deal
Unlimited Unlimited mins Unlimited texts	Unlimited data 10Mbps max speed	£32.00 per month 12 month contract	See deal
Unlimited Unlimited mins Unlimited texts	Unlimited data 100Mbps max speed	£35.00 per month 12 month contract	See deal
Unlimited Unlimited mins Unlimited texts	Unlimited data 10Mbps max speed	£38.00 per month 24 month contract	See deal
Unlimited Unlimited mins Unlimited texts	Unlimited data 10Mbps max speed	£39.00 per month 12 month contract	See deal
Unlimited Unlimited mins Unlimited texts	Unlimited data 10Mbps max speed	£40.00 per month 12 month contract	See deal
Unlimited Unlimited mins Unlimited texts	Unlimited data 10Mbps max speed	£42.00 per month 1 month contract	See deal
Unlimited Unlimited mins Unlimited texts	Unlimited data 10Mbps max speed	£42.00 per month 12 month contract	See deal
Unlimited Unlimited mins Unlimited texts	Unlimited data 100Mbps max speed	£42.00 per month 12 month contract	See deal
Unlimited Unlimited mins Unlimited texts	Unlimited data 100Mbps max speed	£45.00 per month 1 month contract	See deal
Unlimited Unlimited mins Unlimited texts	Unlimited data 100Mbps max speed	£45.00 per month 12 month contract	See deal

On Vodafone Unlimited, you can use your mobile phone abroad at no extra charge in 51 destinations. 5G coverage is also available for increased network capacity and lower amounts of latency.

For more information, see our full guide to Vodafone’s price plans in the UK.

ADSL Home Broadband

If you’re signing up for standard home broadband in the UK, the chances are it’ll have an average download speed of 10Mbps or 11Mbps. This is true for all ADSL-based broadband services that are delivered through a phone line.

You can currently get a home broadband connection with an average download speed of 10-11Mbps from ISPs like BT, EE, NOW, Plusnet, Sky and TalkTalk. Prices currently start from £26.95/month:

Service	Download Speed	Monthly Cost (will rise each April by £3)
Fast Broadband	11Mbps average download	£26.95 per month plus £15.00 upfront 18 month contract	See deal
ADSL Broadband	10Mbps average download	£29.99 per month plus £11.99 upfront 24 month contract	See deal

When you order your home broadband connection, you’ll normally be given a personalised estimate of the download speeds that might be available through your phone line. This might be different to the 10-11Mbps figure which is the national average before taking phone line specific factors are taken into account. On ADSL broadband, the average upload speed is normally around 1Mbps.

What Does 10Mbps Allow You To Do?

In general, a 10Mbps download speed should allow you to do almost everything you’d like to do with your mobile phone or broadband connection. This includes browsing the web, using social media and messaging applications, video calling, listening to music online and watching video or television in HD quality. The main thing you won’t be able to do is to stream online video in ultra-HD (4K) quality.

The following table shows the minimum recommended download speed for a number of activities:

Activity	Required Download Speed	Usable on 10Mbps connection?
General web browsing	0.1-1Mbps	✔
Social media, instant messaging & e-mail	<0.1Mbps	✔
Skype/WhatsApp phone call	0.1Mbps	✔
Skype/Zoom video call	0.5-0.8Mbps	✔
Skype/Zoom video call (HD)	1.5-1.8Mbps	✔
Zoom group video call (HD)	2.5-3Mbps	✔
Listening to online radio	0.2Mbps	✔
Streaming music (Spotify, Apple Music, etc)	0.4Mbps	✔
Watching YouTube videos (basic quality)	0.5Mbps	✔
Watching YouTube videos (720p HD quality)	2.5Mbps	✔
Watching YouTube videos (1080p HD quality)	4Mbps	✔
Watching iPlayer/Netflix (standard definition)	1.5Mbps	✔
Watching iPlayer/Netflix (high definition)	5Mbps	✔
Watching iPlayer/Netflix (4K UHD)	25Mbps	✘
Online Gaming (Xbox One/PS4)	3Mbps	✔

Sharing Your Connection

One thing to bear in mind is the possibility that your 10Mbps connection will be shared amongst multiple people. For instance, you might tether or use personal hotspot to share your smartphone’s connection with another device. Alternatively, for home broadband, there might be multiple people or devices sharing the same 10Mbps connection.

For instance, if you were streaming HD-quality video on 2 devices at the same time, this would use a total of 10Mbps (that’s 2 devices x 5Mbps for each device). For this reason, it wouldn’t be possible to stream HD-quality video on more than 2 devices at the same time if you have a 10Mbps connection.

Download Times

On a 10Mbps connection, it should take around 2 seconds to load a web page or to download a high-quality photo. Downloading a typical MP3 file will take about 4 seconds whereas a typical mobile application will take 24 seconds to download.

Activity	10Mbps Download Time
Accessing typical web page	2 seconds
Sending an e-mail without attachments	<0.1 seconds
Downloading high-quality photograph	2 seconds
Downloading an music track (MP3)	4 seconds
Downloading an application	24 seconds

Typical file sizes used in our calculations: 2MB for a webpage, 10KB for a basic e-mail, 2MB for a high-quality photograph, 5MB for a music track and 30MB for a typical application download.

When calculating the expected download time for a file, it’s important to remember that 10Mbps stands for 10 Megabits per second (where 8 Megabits are equal to 1 Megabyte). For this reason, it will take around 8 seconds to download a 10MB (10 Megabyte) file on a 10Mbps connection.

More Information

For more information, see our guides to download speed and upload speed. Alternatively, we’ve also got an in-depth comparison of Vodafone’s mobile plans and home broadband providers in the UK.