Setup
How much internet speed do you need for IPTV?
A practical table for Canadian households, including what happens when three people watch at once.
IPTV Canada · · 4 min read
The honest answer is that most Canadian home connections are already fast enough, and the bottleneck is Wi-Fi rather than the plan you pay for.
Per stream
| Quality | Speed needed |
|---|---|
| SD | 5 Mbps |
| HD (720p/1080p) | 10–15 Mbps |
| 4K | 25 Mbps |
For a household
Add the streams together, then add about 20% of headroom for everything else in the house. Two HD screens and someone on a video call needs roughly 40 Mbps to be comfortable.
Wi-Fi is usually the real limit
A 500 Mbps plan measured at the router can be 15 Mbps at a TV upstairs. Test on the device you watch on, in the place it sits. If the number is low there but high next to the router, the fix is placement or an ethernet cable — not a bigger plan.
Check yours
Our speed test downloads a file from this server and reports what your device actually got. Run it from the couch, not from the router.