Another important factor in your choice of a broadband Internet deal is whether there is a download limit (sometimes called a usage allowance), and how high this limit is.
Not every broadband provider imposes a limit on how much use you can make of your Internet connection, although most have clauses in their terms and conditions to prevent what they consider to be excessive use.
Where download limits are imposed, they can range from as little as 1Gb (one gigabyte) per month to 15Gb or 30Gb per month. What do these numbers mean?
Well, a gigabyte is a bit less than the amount of data that fits on two CD-ROMs. Doesn’t that depend on the size of the CD Rom? If 700 then it’s a lot less than on 2 CDs? Whether or not that seems like a little or a lot depends largely on what you intend to do while connected to the Internet… here’s another table to show you what download limits could mean for you in practical terms:
| Usage Allowance (Gb per month) |
Number of web pages (assuming 100 kilobytes of data per page) |
Number of songs (assuming 1 song is a 5 megabyte MP3 file) |
| 1Gb | 10,500 | 205 (about 20 albums) |
| 2Gb | 21,000 | 410 (about 40 albums) |
| 6Gb | 63,000 | 1229 (about 120 albums) |
| 15Gb | 157,000 | 3072 (about 300 albums) |
| 30Gb | 314,500 | 6144 (about 600 albums) |
| Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
At this point we should probably make it clear that we’re not advocating the downloading of music, films or other files via file-sharing network. Contrary to what you might think, there are plenty of perfectly legal sources of music on the Internet!
It should be fairly obvious from the numbers that you’re hardly likely to exceed your monthly download allowance just by looking at web pages - unless you’re still working on that speed-reading record…
The limit will only become a problem if you start to use the Internet to download (or stream) a lot of audio or video files or to download a lot of software. If you spend several hours of hours a day online, perhaps making use of online radio stations, or playing games, then it’s surprising just how much of your usage allowance you’ll get through.
Rule of Thumb: Generally speaking, we would recommend the following:
- Avoid any deal with a monthly allowance of 1Gb (one gigabyte) or less, unless you’re a very light Internet user or can only afford one of the cheaper deals.
- Many deals currently available offer a 15Gb monthly allowance; for most people this should be more than adequate, although if you shop around you may be able to find a deal with an unlimited allowance for the same price.
- If you think you are likely to want to download large numbers of files, or are a serious online gamer, go for a larger download limit - or better still a deal with no limit.
