The Internet project "Be mobile" tested the ultra-high-speed Internet tariffs of the provider "Dom.ru" in Chelyabinsk. For the experiment, we selected the most popular offers among users and compared them with each other.

Three or four years ago, one of the main topics of any conversation of young people was the speed of the Internet. The transition from 2 megabits of ADSL to 10 megabits of optical fiber was considered the height of reasonable and unreasonable needs of any user of the Network. It was like buying your own apartment or a business class car. Now no one is surprised at such a speed. And in general, the topic of speeds goes by the wayside.

However, the race continues. At least the operators think so. They bring new and new offers to the market. Almost each of them already has tariffs of 100-200 Mbps.

By the way, connections of this type are increasingly being used by providers to pass IP television signals, video from the Internet to the TV screen and other modern services. Content producers, seeing the modernization of networks and the ability of providers to pass large amounts of traffic on their networks, are starting to produce more and more films, series in high definition and even 4K.

The editors of the Internet project "Be Mobile" decided to compare the ultra-high-speed Internet tariffs of one of the leading telecom operators in Chelyabinsk in order to understand why such speeds are needed and to whom they can be useful.

To do this, we chose four offers from Dom.ru with different speeds from 10 to 200 megabits per second.

For the purity of the experiment, measurements were taken on June 1 and 2, 2015 in Chelyabinsk from 8:00 to 12:00. This was done in order to avoid loading external channels. For tests, we took the Asus RT-68U router (BCM4708A, 256MB RAM, 128MB Flash, 802.11ac and Beamforming support is present).

For measurements, the three most commonly used actions by ordinary users were selected:

1. Standard speed measurement via Speedtest.net

3. Downloading a file from the Internet: distribution kit with corporate CRM (260 MB)

During the tests, the downloaded files were deleted each time, the browser cache was cleared, proxy servers were not used. Thus, it can be argued that the results depended only on the channel speed and nothing more. Looking ahead, let's say right away that the test results surprised us. But let's talk about everything in order.

Speed ​​measurements

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At first we ran Speedtest five times. Here are our average results:

	Dom.ru 10	Dom.ru 40	Dom.ru 100	Dom.ru 200
Claimed internet speed	10 Mbps	40 Mbps	100 Mbps	200 Mbps
ping	4 ms	4 ms	3ms	4 ms
Incoming speed	11.2 Mbps	40.7 Mbps	94.4 Mbps	185.4 Mbps
Outgoing speed	10.6 Mbps	42 Mbps	92.0 Mbps	196.5 Mbps

In general, we did not record any serious deviations from the declared speeds at any tariff. Everything is expected.

Web surfing

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As a result of measuring the time of five consecutive openings of the main page www.mail.ru in the Chrome browser, we received the following data:

	Dom.ru 10	Dom.ru 40	Dom.ru 100	Dom.ru 200
Average page load time on the web	3 sec	3.5 sec	3 sec	3 sec

The results look strange at first glance. All rates show identical data. Why is it at 10 megabits per second the download speed is 3 seconds, and at 40 megabits per second - 3.5? In fact, there is nothing strange. If you watch the channel load schedule online, you can see that even at peak times, the load does not rise above 3-4 megabits - this is a feature of the "slow start" mechanism of the TCP / IP protocol. The scatter of data here is completely random, and on average, on the slowest connection, on the fastest, the page opening time lies in the same range of 3-4 seconds.

In fact, only 3-4 megabits of the channel are used. In the general case, when simply browsing the Internet, the user will not be able to distinguish the difference between 10 megabits and 200 megabits, which cannot be said about downloading “heavy” content.

Downloading files from the Internet

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Much more dependent on speed is the direct download of files from the Web. Here are the results we got with a standard download of a 260 MB file:

To be honest, the results were surprising. As it turned out, the download time of files at rates of 10 and 200 Mbps is not proportional. Despite the fact that the speeds differ by 20 times, the difference in loading time differs by 2.5 times. At tariffs of 100 and 200 Mbps, the differences are even smaller. And the reason is simple - the servers from which the distribution is downloaded limit the speed with which they "give" this file. This is done to protect the server from overloads, because there can be a hundred or even a thousand such simultaneous downloads. This must be borne in mind.

Downloading files via a torrent client

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Unlike the standard download of files from the Web, where server owners are insured against overloads and limit the maximum possible download speed, torrent technology was invented. Its essence lies in the fact that the file (the distribution kit of the game or the movie) is located not on one server, but on many. Moreover, the servers in this case are user computers located throughout the Internet. Therefore, you can download the file in parts: part from one computer, the next part from another, etc. This is the advantage of technology. Minus - for downloading you need a special torrent client program. In addition, you need to have a torrent link to the file. Links are usually posted on specialized forums.

This is where the difference in tariffs becomes visible to the naked eye. For example, we downloaded the distribution kit of the World Of Tanks game, 7.2 GB in size. Here are the results we got:

At the rate of 10 megabits, the required file was downloaded for almost an hour, at the rate of 40 megabits - in 18 minutes, and at the rate of 200 megabits - only 3.5 minutes. The difference is very noticeable.

It turns out that high-speed tariffs should be recommended to users who often transfer or receive large files, whether they are distributions of programs, games, movies, TV shows and other multimedia content.

I have been using the high-speed tariff for 1.5 months now and I am very glad that I switched. Downloading games, movies in high definition began to happen 4-5 times faster. It's very tangible. If earlier I spent an hour and a half to download a movie, now the same thing happens in 5-10 minutes. Moreover, in addition to the Internet, I got access to 135 digital television channels. We watch and use the whole family, - says Stanislav Pokhlebaev, a subscriber of the Dom.ru 200 tariff.

I am very glad that I have a high-speed Dom.ru tariff. Movies, music and other heavy content are loaded in minutes. Previously, the same thing was loaded for an hour and two, - Artyom, another subscriber of the Dom.ru 200 tariff, notes. - It remains to buy a TV with 4K support and watch movies in ultra-high definition.

Results

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The results of our experiment showed that superfast rates are not a myth. They really provide a tangible advantage for those who regularly download or download large files from the Internet, watch movies and series using torrents.

If you are a professional geek who spends nights looking for the most modern and perfect games, if you need to download the entire season of a series, movie or distribution kit of a “heavy” program as quickly as possible, then we recommend that you take a closer look at the Dom.ru 200 tariff . It will help save you time and nerves.

What does the concept of “normal Internet speed” imply, what should it be for optimal work and leisure time on a personal computer. The same connection will seem to someone quite sufficient, and to someone - the inability to work effectively. What is normal for an Internet cafe, for the University of Moscow State University, for example, "will not be enough."

Using computers at home raises reasonable questions for users: what is the speed of a suitable tariff plan.

If the finances of the PC owner are limited, when choosing a tariff for home Internet, he will definitely come across a number of offers from providers that prevent him from making the right decision. To avoid mistakes, you should know some parameters that determine the quality of the Internet at home.

To determine, you first need to familiarize yourself with the basic concepts.

Bits, kilobits, megabits

Data transfer speed is usually measured in bits / sec. But since a bit is a very small value, kilobits or megabits are used:

• Kilobits = 1024 bits.
• Megabit = 1024 kilobits.

With the advent of optical cables, Internet speeds have increased dramatically. If earlier 128 kbps was considered normal, today the parameter is measured in megabits and is 100 megabits per second (Mbps).

Therefore, megabits per second is the standard unit for measuring the speed of the modern Internet. The conditional classification of Internet communications is as follows:

• slow - 512 Kbps;
• low - 2 Mbps;
• medium - 10 Mbps;
• high - 50 Mbps;
• very high - 100 Mbps.

It must be understood that the lower the speed, the lower the tariff.

A byte is not a bit

Internet users are interested in working with files, their size is usually measured in bytes, kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes, equal to:

• Byte - 8 bits.
• Kilobyte = 1024 bytes.
• Megabyte = 1024 kilobytes.
• Gigabyte = 1024 megabytes.

Inexperienced users confuse bytes with bits. And they get megabits (Mbps) instead of megabytes. This leads to a serious error, for example, when calculating the download time of files.

It is unrealistic to accurately determine the period for downloading a file, because:

• Providers indicate the maximum connection speed. The average (working) will be lower.
• The speed is reduced by interference, especially if a remote router is used.
• The remote FTP server restricts downloads so much that everything else becomes irrelevant.

But the approximate time, nevertheless, is possible to establish. Calculations will be easier if you round:

• byte = 10 bits;
• kilobyte = 1 thousand bytes.

But it's better to just start downloading and determine the download time using the program than to calculate the time theoretically.

What tasks affect the choice of speed

The lower the Internet connection speed, the smaller the range of available tasks, but the tariff is cheaper. The right choice allows you to feel comfortable without wasting money.

Outlining the circle of interests

The Internet is used to solve various problems:

• Surfing social networks, listening to music.
• Online games.
• Organization of streaming broadcasting (stream).
• video calls.
• Watching videos online.
• Downloading music, movies, other files.
• Uploading files to cloud storage.

Choose a connection

When the circle of interests is defined, we set ourselves tasks and choose the appropriate tariff.

Providers offer various types of connection, for example, 300 rubles per month for Internet access at a speed of 15 Mbps.

There are two numbers in the tariff descriptions:

the second is the transfer (Upload).

If the second number is missing, then the speeds are equal. If necessary, check with your internet service provider.

How much internet speed is enough

To determine this indicator, the user is helped by a number of tasks that he needs to work with a PC:

For social networks and music

You don't need high speed to surf social networks and listen to music. The user will feel quite comfortable with 2 Mbps. Even a speed of 512 Kbps will do, but the pages of the sites will open more slowly.

To watch videos online

The following speed indicators for watching videos online are considered normal, depending on the quality of videos and movies:

• SD Video (360p, 480p) - 2Mbps
• HD video (720p) - 5 Mbps
• Full-HD (1080p) - 8 Mbps
• Ultra-HD (2160 p) - 30 Mbps.

100 Mbps - this speed is more than enough to watch online video in any quality. Because browsing is buffered, small dips in speed do not affect browsing.

For streams

To organize streaming broadcasting, you need a stable Internet connection. For a quality stream, the speed should not fall below a critical level. For video stream:

• 480p - 5Mbps
• 720p - 10Mbps
• 1080p - 20Mbps

But these are risky values. The transmission is the most critical, since broadcasting is the uploading of data to the Internet, so we focus on it.

Still, jumps are possible. The tariff is chosen so as to level them.

We calculate the optimal speed for the Internet by multiplying the speed of a quality stream by 2.5. For example, let's calculate the speed for 480p: 5 x 2.5 = 12.5 Mbps.

Taking into account the fact that the boundary values ​​are risky, we select Upload not lower than 15 Mbps.

Online Games

Games are undemanding to speed parameters. For most popular games, 512 Kbps is sufficient. This value is suitable for:

• Dota 2.
• World of Warcraft.
• GTA.
• World of Tanks.

But downloading the game and downloading updates at 512 Kbps will be very slow, as you will have to download tens of gigabytes. In order not to wait for hours, it is better to provide speeds up to 70 Mbps.

For games, the determining factor is the quality of the communication channel, characterized by the parameter "ping" (ping). the time it takes for a signal (request) to reach the server and return back (response). Ping is measured in milliseconds (ms).

Ping is affected by:

• The reliability of the Internet provider, which consists in the ability to maintain the declared quality of communication.
• Distance from client to server. For example, the player is located in Sevastopol, and the World of Warcraft game server is in London.

Acceptable ping values:

A persistent ping value above 300ms on any servers is seen as a symptom of serious network connection problems. The reaction time is extremely low.

For smartphones and tablets

If the device is connected to the router via Wi-Fi, it will work in the same way as a computer. The difference is that advanced sites offer pages for gadgets with convenient placement of information on a small screen.

But smartphones and tablets are “sharpened” for mobile Internet. Cellular operators for working with the Internet offer:

• 3G standard - up to 4 Mbps;
• 4G standard - up to 80 Mbps.

The operator's website contains a coverage map with marked 3G and 4G zones. The relief of a particular area makes adjustments, then instead of 4G there will be 3G, and instead of 3G there will be 2G - the standard is too slow for the Internet.

4G communication is provided only by devices equipped with modern radio modules.

In the mobile Internet, the client pays for traffic, not for speed. The question of choosing a normal Internet speed for the device is not worth it. The user selects the appropriate amount of megabytes of traffic.

For video calls

• voice calls - 100 Kbps;
• video calls - 300 Kbps;
• video calls (HD standard) - 5 Mbps;
• voice video communication (five participants) - 4 Mbps (reception) 512 Kbps (transmission).

In practice, these values ​​are multiplied by 2.5 to compensate for spikes.

Factors affecting connection speed

The following factors affect the quality of the connection:

• Wi-Fi standard supported by devices.
• The frequency at which data is transmitted.
• Walls and partitions in the signal path.
• Computer and browser settings.
• VPN and proxy.
• Outdated drivers.
• Interference from other networks.
• Viruses and malware.

You can find out the current connection speed (it is better to check at night) using the SpeedTest service. If it is very different from the one declared by the provider, you need to find the reason.

When choosing a connection speed, the number of users connected to Wi-Fi, the speed characteristics of tasks used in parallel mode and taken into account when choosing a suitable tariff are taken into account.

Conclusion

You can use the Internet in different ways. It is difficult to enumerate all the tasks set. But among those considered, it is necessary to find a similar one and decide on the connection.

Few people doubt that sooner or later (and rather sooner) both providers and their subscribers will move to the next level of speeds and gigabit networks. However, despite the successes, so far things are not moving too fast.

There are, by and large, two reasons for this. The first is that subscribers do not need such high speeds. You can download even 100 Mbps only with movies with torrents, and even then, only in FullHD. Of course, in a large family with active users, a wide channel can somehow come in handy, but there are not too many such subscribers. The second reason is a noticeably different subscription fee compared to tariffs for networks with a maximum speed of 100 Mbps. Usually the fee is higher than the psychologically acceptable 1,000 rubles per month, and noticeably higher than the current payment. The reason for this state of affairs is banal - a completely different class of active equipment with a corresponding price tag, the payback of which, at low tariffs, stretches beyond the planning horizon.

However, there are exceptions to any rule. For our country, this exception was the xPON networks of the two largest telephonists: MGTS and Rostelecom. Unlike the majority of providers whose network was built using FTTB FastEthernet technology, xPON initially meant the possibility of sending more than one hundred megabits per second to the subscriber, albeit with its own characteristics. It was foolish not to take advantage of such a competitive advantage, and a couple of years ago MGTS launched tariffs with speeds of 200, 350 and 500 Mbps. True, by putting an appropriate price tag on them, which immediately made high-speed tariffs uninteresting for the broad masses. Looking at the deplorable results of such activities, the operator decided that it was time to change something. The result of this was a new offer: 200 Mbps for 490 rubles per month. This is almost 2.5 times cheaper than the "usual" MGTS tariff. Not only that, it's cheaper than the vast majority of competitors offering 100 Mbps, not to mention something more. At such a cost, you can safely forget about the redundancy of such a speed - if they give, why not take it? Might come in handy sometime. And if you don't need it, it's still cheap.

The only negative circumstance at this celebration of life is the action of the tariff: it will be available for connection only until the end of May for new subscribers. This is smoothed out by the fact that, unlike other similar offers, the tariff parameters will not change after the promo period. So the lucky ones will continue to pay 490 rubles a month for a speed of 200 Mbps.

One question remains: why is MGTS? The answer is, in general, simple. New subscribers in the capital have almost run out, and there is simply nowhere to get them in large quantities. In such a situation, the only way to increase the client base is to pull it from others, but the problem is that for the sake of saving 100 rubles, only a small part will run to change the provider. Remains dumping both in price and speed. An important circumstance is that investments in the network have already been made, and immediately in a high-speed network, which gave a significant advantage over competitors, for which, under the current conditions, the price of development has doubled.

Today, the Internet is needed in every home no less than water or electricity. And in every city there are a lot of companies or small firms that can provide people with access to the Internet.

The user can choose any package for using the Internet from a maximum of 100 Mbps to a low speed, for example, 512 kbps. How to choose the right speed and the right Internet provider for yourself?

Of course, the Internet speed must be chosen based on what you do online and how much you are willing to pay per month for Internet access. From my own experience, I want to say that the speed of 15 Mbps suits me quite well as a person who works on the network. Working on the Internet, I have 2 browsers turned on, and each has 20-30 tabs open, while problems arise more from the computer side (to work with a large number of tabs, you need a lot of RAM and a powerful processor) than from the Internet speed. The only moment when you have to wait a little is the moment when the browser is first launched, when all the tabs are loaded at the same time, but usually it takes no more than a minute.

1. What do internet speed values ​​mean

Many users confuse Internet speed values ​​​​thinking that 15Mb / s is 15 megabytes per second. In fact, 15Mb / s is 15 megabits per second, which is 8 times less than megabytes and at the output we will get about 2 megabytes of download speed for files and pages. If you usually download movies for viewing with a size of 1500 Mb, then at a speed of 15 Mbps the movie will be downloaded in 12-13 minutes.

We watch a lot or a little of your Internet speed

• The speed is 512 kbps 512 / 8 = 64 kbps (this speed is not enough to watch online video);
• The speed is 4 Mbps 4 / 8 = 0.5 MB / s or 512 kB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 480p);
• The speed is 6 Mbps 6 / 8 = 0.75 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 720p);
• The speed is 16 Mbps 16 / 8 = 2 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 2K);
• The speed is 30 Mbps 30 / 8 = 3.75 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in quality up to 4K);
• The speed is 60 Mbps 60 / 8 = 7.5 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in any quality);
• The speed is 70 Mbps 60 / 8 = 8.75 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in any quality);
• The speed is 100 Mbps 100 / 8 = 12.5 MB / s (this speed is enough to watch online video in any quality).

Many connecting the Internet are worried about the possibility of watching online video, let's see what kind of traffic movies with different quality need.

2. Internet speed required to watch online video

And here you will find out a lot or a little of your speed for watching online videos with different quality formats.

Broadcast type	Video bitrate	Audio bitrate (stereo)	Traffic Mb/s (megabytes per second)
Ultra HD 4K	25-40 Mbps	384 kbps	from 2.6
1440p (2K)	10 Mbps	384 kbps	1,2935
1080p	8000 kbps	384 kbps	1,0435
720p	5000 kbps	384 kbps	0,6685
480p	2500 kbps	128 kbps	0,3285
360p	1000 kbps	128 kbps	0,141

We see that all the most popular formats are reproduced without problems with an Internet speed of 15 Mbps. But to watch video in 2160p (4K) format, you need at least 50-60 Mbps. but there is one BUT. I don’t think that many servers will be able to distribute video of this quality while maintaining such a speed, so if you connect the Internet at 100 Mbps, you won’t be able to watch online video in 4K.

3. Internet speed for online games

When connecting home Internet, every gamer wants to be 100% sure that his Internet speed will be enough to play his favorite game. But as it turns out, online games are not at all demanding on the speed of the Internet. Consider what speed popular online games require:

1. DOTA 2 - 512 kbps
2. World of Warcraft - 512 kbps
3. GTA online - 512 kbps.
4. World of Tanks (WoT) - 256-512 kbps.
5. Panzar - 512 kbps
6. Counter Strike - 256-512 kbps

Important! The quality of your game online is more dependent not on the speed of the Internet, but on the quality of the channel itself. For example, if you (or your provider) receive Internet via satellite, then no matter what package you use, the ping in the game will be much higher than that of a wired channel with a lower speed.

4. Why do you need Internet more than 30 Mbps.

In exceptional cases, I might recommend using a faster connection of 50 Mbps or more. Not many people will be able to provide such a speed in full, the company "Internet to Home" is not the first year on this market and it inspires confidence, the more important is the stability of the connection, and I want to believe that they are on top here. A high Internet connection speed may be necessary when working with large amounts of data (downloading and uploading them from the network). Perhaps you are a fan of watching movies in excellent quality, or you download large games every day, or upload videos or work files of large volumes to the Internet. To check the connection speed, you can use various online services, and to optimize the work you need to run.

By the way, speeds of 3 Mbps and below usually make surfing the net a little unpleasant, not all online video sites work well, and downloading files is generally not happy.

Be that as it may, there are plenty to choose from in the Internet services market today. Sometimes, in addition to global providers, the Internet is offered by local firms, and often the level of their service is also on top. The cost of services in such firms is of course much lower than that of large companies, but as a rule, the coverage of such firms is quite insignificant, usually within a district or two.

Russia has a very good and, no less important, affordable home Internet. Seriously! In villages and a very deep province, things are, of course, worse, but take any, even a small city in the European part of the country and look at the tariffs. For 300-400 rubles a month, you can bring Internet to an apartment at a speed of around 25-50 megabits per second, and for some promotion, all 100 megabits.

For comparison: in "civilized" countries, fast Internet (both home and mobile) costs an order of magnitude more expensive. And the concept of “monthly data limit” still lives there. We have this left only with cellular operators.

However, cheapness is not a reason to pay for something that you do not use. Even a hundred rubles saved warms the wallet, and therefore the tariff for home Internet must be chosen based on real speed needs. Let's figure out how many megabits per second are required in various situations, and start with basic concepts.

Megabits, megabytes and real speeds

The data size is usually measured in bytes. For example, an HD movie weighs between 700 megabytes (megabytes) to 1.4 gigabytes (gigabytes), while Full HD is 4 to 14 gigabytes.

It is customary to indicate the data transfer rate in bits (not bytes!) Per second, and sometimes this causes misunderstanding.

Byte ≠ bit.

1 byte = 8 bits.

1 megabyte = 8 megabits.

1 megabyte per second = 8 megabits per second.

If the user does not distinguish between bytes and bits, then he can easily confuse them or take them for the same thing. In this case, it will calculate the approximate download time of an HD movie via torrent like this:

1. The film weighs 1,400 "mega".
2. Internet speed 30 "mega" per second.
3. The movie will download in 1400 / 30 = 46.6 seconds.

In fact, the Internet speed is 30 megabits per second = 3.75 megabytes per second. Accordingly, 1,400 megabytes should be divided not by 30, but by 3.75. In this case, the download time will be 1,400 / 3.75 = 373 seconds.

In practice, the speed will be even lower, because Internet providers indicate the speed "to", that is, the maximum possible, and not working. In addition, interference, especially when transmitting over Wi-Fi, network congestion, as well as limitations and features of user equipment and service provider equipment, all contribute. You can check your speed with , and increase it with .

Often the resource from which you download something becomes the neck. For example, your Internet speed is 100 megabits per second, and the site gives data at a speed of 10 megabits per second. In this case, the download will occur at a speed of no more than 10 megabits per second, and there is nothing to be done about it.

What internet speed do you really need

Obviously, the above table needs clarification.

Questions and answers

What to do if the Internet is used on two or more devices at once?

Let's say you watch Full HD streaming video on a smart TV, your wife is surfing YouTube on a laptop with an HD screen, and your child is also watching something from a smartphone or tablet in HD quality. Does this mean that the numbers from the table need to be summed up?

Yes, absolutely right. In this case, you will need about 20 megabits per second.

Why do different sites have different speed requirements for watching videos of the same resolution?

There is such a thing as bitrate - the amount of information that encodes an image per unit of time, and, accordingly, a conditional indicator of picture and sound quality. The higher the bitrate, the better the image, as a rule. That is why on torrents you can find versions of the same movie with the same resolution, but different sizes.

In addition, there are ultra-smooth videos at 60 frames per second. They weigh more and require faster internet.

Is it true that online games are so undemanding to the speed of the Internet?

Yes, for most games like CS, Dota 2, WoT, WoW and even GTA 5, only one megabit per second is more than enough for multiplayer, but in this case, ping becomes decisive - the time it takes for a signal to travel from you to the game server and back. The lower the ping, the lower the delay in the game.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to know in advance even an approximate ping in a particular game through a particular provider, since its value is not constant and depends on many factors.

Why does the picture and sound from the interlocutors go to me normally during video calls, but not from me to them?

In this case, not only the incoming, but also the outgoing Internet speed becomes important. Often, providers do not indicate the outgoing speed in the tariff at all, but you can check it yourself using the same Speedtest.net.

For broadcasting through a webcam, an outgoing speed of 1 megabit per second is sufficient. In the case of HD cameras (and even more so Full HD), the requirements for outgoing speed increase.

Why do ISPs start at 20–30 or more megabits per second in tariffs?

Because the higher the speed, the more money you can take. Providers could keep tariffs "from the past" at a speed of 2-10 megabits per second and reduce their cost to 50-100 rubles, but why? It is much more profitable to increase the minimum speeds and prices.