AT&T Fiber 300 Review: Here’s Why I Won’t Be Upgrading From This Plan Anytime Soon

As someone who writes about home internet plans for a living, I often come across the misconception that investing in faster speeds is the best solution for slow internet. That’s not always true. In fact, there are several steps you can take to optimize your Wi-Fi and improve the reliability of your internet connection before reaching for your wallet.

I’ve been using AT&T cheapest fiber internet plan for 10 months now. I switched over from Spectru in October and immediately noticed the difference. We often tout the benefits of internet prin fibră optică at CNET, and I quickly learned why in real time: Fiber is much more reliable, future-proofed and offers viteze simetrice de descărcare și încărcare. At $55 a month, I was paying roughly the same price I’d been paying Spectrum (albeit for less speed), and I’ve never experienced an outage or encountered a problem with buffering or streaming (something I suffered through a lot with Spectrum).

I’ll level with you: $55 for 300 megabiți pe secundă download speed is not the best internet deal in the industry. In fact, there are plenty of better internet deals, such as Frontier Fiber 500Mbps for $30 monthly or even Spectrum’s lowest standard tier of 500Mbps for $50 monthly. But if you want to switch to fiber internet and have limited internet options like me, AT&T lowest tier is worth a try.

Although I work 100% remotely, I’d consider my internet usage below average. According to the latest data from OpenVault, the average household uses around 564Mbps in download speed. I don’t game online and neither does my partner. We stream occasionally, but otherwise our internet usage is pretty light. There are a maximum of two smart devices in my house, and usually, only two or three devices are online at a time, making 300Mbps plenty of speed to go around.

If you and the members of your household have higher-than-average internet usage habits, 300Mbps will likely not be enough. If you have jucători, more than one remote worker and a decent line-up of smart devices, 300Mbps probably won’t get you very far. But if you’re trying to stick to a budget and your internet use is on the lighter end, like mine, AT&T’s Fiber 300 plan might just work for you. Here’s everything you need to know.

How does AT&T Fiber 300 stack up to similar options cost-wise?

Before signing up for AT&T, I knew I wanted to keep my internet costs below $60 monthly. The average monthly cost of internet is around $63, not including taxe ascunse or equipment costs, and I didn’t want to exceed that amount.

The cheapest internet plan from any provider typically offers the lowest available speeds for the highest cost per Mbps, making it one of the least cost-efficient options despite the low monthly fees. AT&T’s Fiber 300 plan is no exception. Even though it’s the provider’s cheapest internet plan, it has a cost per Mbps of around 18 cents. That’s the highest speed/price ratio of any AT&T Fiber plan.

It is also higher than entry-level plans from other leading internet service providers, including Spectrum and Fibră cuantică, which both offer speeds up to 500Mbps starting at $50 a month. Those plans are $5 cheaper than AT&T Fiber 300 and offer almost double the speed.

Still, the AT&T Fiber 300 plan is a solid entry-level choice for home internet, especially if you’re limited on high-speed internet options and trying to stick to a budget. In my case, I wanted to avoid paying $80 monthly for AT&T’s 1-gig plan — a speed I was sure would go to waste in my house. The next speed tier up, AT&T Fiber 500, was also a viable option at $65 monthly, but I had a feeling 500Mbps would be too much speed for my internet usage and wanted to see how far I’d get with 300Mbps.

AT&T Fiber 300: No data caps, contracts or equipment fees

The speed and reliability of a conexiune la internet prin fibră optică outpace offerings from cable internet, and I’ve definitely noticed the difference. Although Spectrum offers 500Mbps in download speed, viteze de încărcare max out at 20Mbps. As a remote worker, I rely on fast upload speeds for video calls, sharing/uploading documents and doing research. Since making the switch to fiber internet, my video call quality has increased, and I’m not experiencing any of the usual network congestion during peak usage times.

I’ve stressed the cost and speed value of the AT&T Fiber 300 plan so far, and for a good reason, but what else is there to the plan and AT&T service, in general?

AT&T Fiber plans come with date nelimitate, meaning I don’t have to monitor my monthly data usage to avoid throttled speeds or overage fees. There are also no contract requirements and no added monthly equipment fees. Plus, I don’t have to pay extra for equipment. A technician from AT&T installed a gateway device in my office (after conducting a few speed tests with me to find the most optimal spot), and I’ve rarely encountered issues with it.

That’s a good deal, considering the speeds I get. Speaking of which, let’s take a look at what 300Mbps looks like in my house.

Is 300Mbps a good speed?

When you sign up for an internet plan, your internet provider only guarantees speeds “up to” the plan’s value. So, although I’m paying for 300Mbps, I don’t always get that speed consistently. My speeds have dipped as low as 273Mbps, but I’ve also seen them as high as 350Mbps and sometimes as high as 400Mbps. Still, the speeds I see overall are much more consistent than what I got with a cable internet connection.

Conform Federal Communications Commission, 300Mbps should be more than enough speed to game online, stream in HD or 4K and simultaneously take Zoom calls on multiple devices. The official recommendation from the FCC is a minimum speed of 4Mbps for online multiplayer games, 25Mbps for streaming in 4K and 6Mbps for HD videoconferencing, all well below 300Mbps. 

Additionally, while speeds of 300Mbps can, in theory, support numerous devices at once (10 or more, depending on the activity on each), each connected device will consume its share of bandwidth. The more devices you connect, the slower your actual speeds will likely be on each. 

Since I work remotely and my partner doesn’t, there are as few as two devices working at a time throughout the day. Neither of us games online, and we only have one smart TV; 300Mbps is plenty to go around for our internet usage.

I tried a few easy steps to optimize that 300Mbps, like placing my router in a central, raised location in my office and taking a few speed tests to gauge the connection in different rooms. Since my router is in my office, a room near the back of the house, I initially worried that my smart TV wouldn’t get consistent speeds. AT&T does offer smart Wi-Fi extenders, which I briefly considered, but for the cost of $10 monthly, it would be smarter to upgrade to the next tier and pay $65 monthly for 500Mbps; I don’t foresee myself making that upgrade yet.

Surprisingly, when I tested my internet connection speed with Ookla’s Speedtest, I found that the speeds in my living room (315Mbps) were slightly faster than those in my office (298Mbps). (Disclosure: Ookla is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.) Although my smart TV face see the occasional lag, it doesn’t happen often, and my work days are uninterrupted with a smooth Wi-Fi connection.

Larger households with bandwidth-hungry devices like smart TVs, video game consoles, smartphones and tablets may require more speed to accommodate everyone’s needs, especially if more than one user is online at a time. If that’s the case, and you want to stick with AT&T, consider upgrading to the AT&T Fiber 500 plan for an additional $10 per month or to AT&T Fiber 1000, which starts at $80 per month.

So is AT&T Fiber 300 fast enough?

It should be for most households. According to Speedtest.net, the average tested residential download speed in the US for November 2024 was 262Mbps, so you’ll potentially get speeds higher than the national average with AT&T Fiber 300. Again, a constant speed of 300Mbps is unlikely with AT&T Fiber 300, especially when using a Wi-Fi connection but I’ve seen consistent speeds since signing up for the service. Still, the plan is likely to offer plenty of speed for the average user or handful of users and most, if not all, of their devices.

AT&T Fiber 300 FAQs