With a huge choice of home broadband providers offering the best broadband deals and offers, you could be forgiven for not knowing where to start when in search of the best home broadband deal that fits your household's unique needs.

Here at Simplifydigital.com our home broadband comparison tables make it easier for you to make your choice and compare broadband services and home broadband deals to make sure you get the best package.

Cheap home broadband

Cheap home broadband is widely available these days from a wide variety of broadband providers. The leading UK  home broadband providers include Sky Broadband, Virgin Media, AOL Broadband and O2 Broadband to name a few.

Home broadband providers often blind us with adverts for super-fast or ultra-fast broadband speeds and can leave us wondering which broadband speed is right for our needs. Don't just say "I need broadband so I will go for the fastest broadband possible", slow down and think about what you really want from your home broadband service.

The main thing to consider when you want to find the best broadband deal is to work out what do you really want from the internet. Do you want to use the internet for reading your email and looking at the latest football scores? Or are you someone who wants to download movies, videos and music files to your PC? From these questions you can work out what type of home broadband package you need.

Your broadband speed is important

Broadband download and upload speeds are an important factor, which will affect the choice and price of your broadband package.

Broadband download speed is the headline speed quoted in broadband advertising and refers to the speed of transfer down the broadband connection to your PC.  Broadband upload speed, is also important as it affects the speed of posting content from your PC onto the internet (e.g. photos on Photobox).  But broadband upload speeds are not widely quoted by broadband providers

Let's work out which download broadband speeds suit your needs:

If you don't use the internet that much:

If surfing the net is about as regular as a solar eclipse for you and you seemed happy with the dial-up connection you had before, then you won't need super-fast broadband speed.

If you just want to send an email to Auntie Mavis in Canada once in a while or do a bit of shopping for Christmas, then you would probably need to look at broadband speed of up to 2 Mbps which is the most basic broadband speed offered by UK home broadband providers. This is 40 times faster than a dial-up connection you may have had before and should be more than adequate for your internet usage.

If you use the internet quite a lot:

This would be using the internet everyday, using email , visiting several websites, and downloading occasional video and music content. The speed you require would be up to 8Mbps or above. TalkTalk's best selling home broadband service for example is an up to 8 Mbps service.

If you use the internet a lot: Now you're speeding!

This might involve downloading several high quality movies and music, uploading photos, online games, and watching catch-up TV such as BBC iPlayer over the internet.

Now you will need to think about a super-fast home broadband package. Super-fast broadband packages start from up to 20 Mbps. And Virgin Media's fibre-optic broadband network offers super-fast broadband speeds of up to 50 Mbps - the fastest home broadband package currently widely available in the UK.

Remember, home broadband download speeds are quoted as "up to" speeds.  This reflects the fact that you are very unlikely to receive the quoted broadband speed in reality. This can be due to a number of reasons including your distance from the telephone exchange and whether or not your broadband comes over copper cable or fibre optic cable.

You can run an online broadband speed test to see what your actual speed is compared to the quoted speed from your broadband provider.

Home broadband - usage limits

Usage limits dictate how much data you can download within the cost of your broadband package.  It is measured in Gigabytes (Gig) of data.  Downloading data-rich things like video and music uses up more Gig - a full length movie for example uses about 1.5Gb to download.

Home broadband usage limits are higher than those available for mobile broadband packages. They vary from around 10Gb through to "unlimited downloads".

Sky Broadband offers its Unlimited Broadband service which has truly unlimited downloads, but other home broadband providers' unlimited broadband come with what's known as a "fair usage policy". A fair usage policy means that if you download excessively you will be encouraged to curtail your usage. Broadband providers can achieve this by slowing down your broadband connection, or charging you.

Wireless home broadband

If you want to use more than one computer for the internet or have a wireless enabled laptop, then you will need to get a wireless router with your home broadband package.

A wireless router allows access to the internet without the need to make holes in your walls to route cables to different PC's or laptops. It also allows you the freedom to use the internet in all areas of your home and even the garden.

Wireless routers now come as part of many home broadband providers' packages but some broadband providers may charge you for the use of the equipment or ask you to buy it from them.

Broadband bundles

You may save money on your home broadband service by going with a provider that offers broadband bundles. Broadband bundles can offer not just a high speed internet connection but also other services such as digital TV, home phone and even mobile broadband services.

Sky for example offers free home broadband as part of a digital TV and home phone bundle offer.