What’s a good internet speed for remote work? How to test if yours is strong enough

The share of employees working remotely worldwide has increased dramatically in the last few years. As much as 52% of remote-capable U.S. employees now work on a hybrid model, attending offices for two or three days a week and working from home the rest of the time.

As such, the need for good home internet speeds is also on the rise. While your regular phone data might be enough to browse social media or the internet on your phone, it would certainly not fit the bill – or increase your bill far too much – for regular remote working tasks such as attending video or VoIP calls or uploading large files to the cloud.

If you’re about to choose an internet provider and wondering what would be a good internet speed for remote work, here’s everything you need to know. We’ll take a deep dive into the recommended internet speeds for various activities and the actual internet speed you need depending on your home work setup.

What “internet speed” actually means

You might have seen internet providers advertising speeds like 200, 300, or even 500 Mbps and immediately concluded that this must be enough for all your remote work needs.

However, this number only tells one part of the story, which is the download speed. There are two kinds of internet speeds you should be aware of: download speed and upload speed.

• Download speed measures how fast content reaches you during activities like streaming, browsing, loading files, and playing games.
• Upload speed measures how fast you can send data out of your system, which comes in handy during video calls, content creation, uploading, or cloud syncing.

Many users tend to look at the advertised high download speed without checking the upload speeds offered by the provider, which is, in fact, the more important number when you are looking for an internet connection for remote work.

There are two more terms you need to know when judging your internet speed: latency and jitter.

Latency is the time it takes for a small packet of data to travel from your device to a server and back, which is measured in milliseconds (ms). This matters a lot for real-time internet activities such as video or voice calls and gaming.

When latency is high, there can be a noticeable delay or lag in your video calls, or between an action and a result, even if your Mbps numbers look great. The lower the latency, the better it is for your internet connection.

Jitter is nothing but the variation in ping over time. For example, if your ping comes to 20, 90, 30, then 50 ms at different times, rather than staying steady at, say, 30 ms, this instability is called jitter. Jitter causes choppy video or audio, since data packets arrive out of order or in bursts due to high jitter.

The official baseline according to the FCC

Before we venture into the details of the internet speed you require for remote work, it is important to understand what the regulatory authorities say about home internet speeds.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) upgraded its definition of broadband in March 2024, from 25 Mbps down/3 Mbps up to 100 Mbps down/20 Mbps up – a significant change based on internet speeds offered by telecom and broadband providers in the US.

This means that the FCC does not consider any speed below 100/20 Mbps as broadband anymore. While this does not mean that it is a required minimum speed you should look for, it gives us a useful baseline, since most task-based requirements fall comfortably within this speed range.

Minimum speeds by work activity

The internet speed you require varies by the kind of activity you’re doing. Here’s a complete breakdown of the recommended internet speeds based on device activity.

Browsing & emails

Browsing the internet and reading emails are download-heavy activities, since they require loading pages and receiving and viewing emails and images. This is why you need to pay attention to download speeds, which usually need to be around 1 to 5 Mbps per user.

This isn’t a major concern, since most internet providers offer speeds as high as 100 to 300 Mbps for home use, meaning you could browse the internet with ease, even with a regular home connection or mobile data.

Video calls

Video calls consume far more bandwidth than basic browsing or email. Here’s what Zoom’s own published recommended bandwidths say:

• 3.8 Mbps/3 Mbps for one-on-one and group video calls in 1080p HD
• 2.6 Mbps/1.8 Mbps, for group calls even at 720p
• 2 Mbps for 25 people in gallery view, 4 Mbps for 49 views
• 50 to 70 kbps screen sharing without a thumbnail, 50 to 150 kbps with a thumbnail
• 60 to 80 kbps for audio VoIP

Microsoft Teams, on the other hand, requires 1.2 Mbps for one-on-one HD video calling in 720p at 30 fps, and 1.5 Mbps for 1080p video quality. HD group video calls require speeds of 1 Mbps/2 Mbps.

Simply put, you’ll need at least 3.8 Mbps/3.0 Mbps speeds for smooth video calls from home.

File uploads

Uploading files to the cloud and digital storage is perhaps the most upload-intensive internet activity you’d be doing from home.

Most cloud-based applications, such as Microsoft 365, Slack, or Google Workspace, require an upload speed of 10 to 50 Mbps. Uploading larger files with bigger attachments requires roughly 10 to 100 Mbps of upload speed, depending on the exact file size.

A university IT support guide published upload times for syncing a 1 GB file to OneDrive across various connection types. As per the publication:

• The file took seven minutes to upload at a speed of 20 Mbps on a home fiber connection
• At 25 Mbps, the time required was just five minutes, even on a 4G connection
• At 40 Mbps, this time drops to three minutes
• At 100 Mbps, it only takes two minutes to upload the 1 GB file

This clearly indicates that the higher your upload speed, the less time it takes to sync files across various cloud providers. While the average recommended speed is around 10 to 100 Mbps, the ideal speed would depend on your needs.

If you don’t regularly need to upload files while working remotely, a connection of up to 50 Mbps might be sufficient for you.

Recommended speeds by household/work setup

Internet speed isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution and depends largely on your remote work setup. The FCC has published guidelines on required internet speeds based on your home setup and internet usage patterns.

Here, basic use covers functions like browsing, email, basic video and VoIP, and internet radio. Moderate use includes functions like streaming HD videos, multiparty video conferencing, telecommuting, and online gaming.

High use includes scenarios where more than one high-demand application or function is being run at the same time or on multiple devices within a household.

The right approach to testing your internet speed

Testing your internet speed requires you to first ensure that the testing conditions are stable and there are no known interruptions. Here’s how you can ensure that your speed tests run as accurately as possible.

Choose a speed-testing tool

First things first, you need a speed-testing tool to check how fast your internet is. There are various tools available on the market, each working slightly differently, which is why it is important to choose the right tool.

For instance, Ookla’s Speedtest, Speedtest.net, and Netflix’s Fast.com are some widely used internet speed testing tools. There is also Google’s built-in speed test.

Test your wired connection first

It’s important to check whether your internet provider delivers the speed it claims to. When you check your internet speed over a Wi-Fi connection, slower internet speeds cannot be pinned solely on your ISP, as there might be issues with your Wi-Fi setup or router.

There are several sources of Wi-Fi interference, such as neighboring Wi-Fi networks, walls and floors, Bluetooth devices, or even your microwave oven.

To eliminate such wireless interference, you need to test your connection using a wired Ethernet connection, which should give you the most accurate measure of your internet speed.

After this, run the test again over Wi-Fi separately and note the difference. If your wired result is much lower than expected, contact your ISP. However, if your Wi-Fi result comes out slow, the problem might be with your setup and not your internet line.

Test at multiple times of the day

Running a single, isolated speed test does not give you concrete evidence of your actual internet speeds. You need to run the test on your chosen tool multiple times at different times of the day to get an approximate speed range your ISP is able to reach.

Internet speeds might drop during peak hours, such as 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays or on weekends. Running tests at different times helps you get a full picture of your ISP's speeds.

Close all background apps before testing

Pause anything that uses the internet or eats up a lot of bandwidth on your device, such as cloud syncing services, content streaming, software updates, or VPN connections. If there are multiple devices within your household, ensure that none of the devices are running any bandwidth-consuming activity.

How to test your internet speed

Once you’ve established the correct testing environment, running the actual speed test is as easy as clicking a button. For this example, we have used Ookla’s Speedtest, which is recommended by T-Mobile.

Once you open the website, click on “Go” to get the speed test started. Ookla first checks your download speed, which takes around 15 to 30 seconds. After that, it measures your upload speed, which takes another 15 to 20 seconds. So, you’ll have your speed details in under a minute.

This is what the results looked like for us. While the download speed was sufficient for our needs, the upload speed came out to be quite low. The ping was also high; however, there was minimal noticeable jitter.

Note: We tested this over a Wi-Fi connection without using a VPN, with one system-heavy application running in the background. Ethernet testing would result in better speeds.

Bottom line

To put it in a nutshell, the internet speed you need for remote work depends on the kind of task you will be engaging in. If you’re just browsing the internet or replying to emails, speeds around 1 to 5 Mbps would be enough.

However, for individual and group video calls, you would need internet speeds as high as 3.8 Mbps/3 Mbps. File uploads require higher speeds, ranging from 10 Mbps to 100 Mbps of upload speed, depending on the exact size of the file.

The speeds also vary based on your household work setup. A single user on a single device might work with 3 to 8 Mbps speeds, whereas a household with multiple users or multiple devices might need speeds of more than 25 Mbps for intensive use.