A CheckBox customer recently contacted us to ask how much bandwidth they needed for their RV resort with 150 sites. After some discussion we learned they were facing a very expensive upgrade to their cable TV system. Realizing most guests were no longer using the resort’s cable and would rather stream content from their own services the resort decided to upgrade their guest WiFi system to meet guest’s expectations for streaming.
If you are a hotel, RV resort or Marina how much bandwidth do you need for guests to stream?
For the last several years the recommendation for bandwidth was to have 5Mbs of incoming bandwidth per guest site/room/boat slip from your Internet Service provider.
In the age of streaming, working remotely and online learning this 5Mb recommendation has quietly evolved into a recommended minimum.
With bandwidth more is better and fortunately bandwidth is getting less expensive and more available.
So how much bandwidth is needed to satisfy guests today? And how much for the next few years?
The new standard has evolved to goal of 20Mb of download bandwidth per guest site/room/boat slip, with possible added bandwidth for large function areas like ballrooms, conference rooms and function halls.
So, for the 150 site RV resort the minimum recommended would be 750Mb of bandwidth, and optimally the goal would be 3Gb of bandwidth. In most case 750 Mb is now achievable, and 3Gb will still be a stretch.
You probably don’t need the full 20 Mb per site to keep all of your guests happy (at least not yet), and for the 150 site property one or two gigabit fiber connections would work very well.
If you can’t get gigabit connections? Using two or three 400Mb cable connections would work well.
If you can’t get fiber or cable? One or two Starlink connections will work.
Providing any of these options will usually be less expensive than installing and maintaining cable TV systems on premise.
The RV resort with 150 sites installed a new WiFi system with 2Gb of bandwidth that was able to meet the guest's expectations for streaming and supporting remote work. They saved tens of thousands of dollars over the costs of a new cable TV system and the monthly cost of bandwidth is significantly less than the cost of monthly cable programming.
