Connection user ratio

[curlycat]

I am interested in upgrading to higher speed. My ISP is offering two packages with the same speed - no throttling. Shaping only when congested. Full speed after hours. One package however offers a lower user connection ratio (50%) but it costs much more. Will this "superior" more expensive package really affect my speed for internet browsing, Youtube and downloads, or is it marketing tricks? Currently on 2mb - going to go 4mb.

 

[Gboss]

A higher contention ratio means there are people on your speed profile contending for that speed.
Most ISP's, big assumption here on my part, have a contention ratio of 1:20 for home uncapped and 1:5 for business.
What this means, in the case of business uncapped, for every 1MB of IPC capacity the ISP has it sells 5 business accounts.
If all 5 business uncapped users that are in the same contention pool are trying to download at the same time they will be splitting this 1MB 5 ways.
So the higher the contention ratio the lower your potential max download speed can be.

PS: I am open to correction on what I said, this is just how I interpret it to be.