40gb data cap - how hard is this to live with?

EdwardTeach

EdwardTeach

EdwardTeach

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18 Mar 2010
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I am considering going with BT's basic fibre package, the one with the 40gb limit. I am coming from being on unlimited broadband, and i am wondering how tough it would be to stay under the limit.

I know that media streaming must be one of our biggest data uses, but I have assumed that because we would be watching more iplayer etc through the BT tv set up (which is not counted for the purpose of the cap), that the cap should be liveable with.

Some games are pretty big downloads now, so i would just have to be a bit more careful about how many i download in a month.

The other thing i was wondering about was skype. I think my wife could use 2hrs\week on skype as her sisters live abroad. I estimate that on best quality this would be about 5gb/month = can anyone shed any light on that.

How much data does things like online gaming use? I am not really into multiplayer games, but will dabble occasionally. how much data does an hour of online gaming use?

i assume web browsing is negligible with regards to the data cap even if you are on the internet all day.
 
How much is it a month? I can't imagine it's cheap enough that you wouldn't be better off doing with Plusnet's Fibre service for £22.50 a month for 80Mb/20Mb.

I personally couldn't hack a 40GB limit, I'd exceed that in a day at the most.
 
Some months I'm fine and some months I go over 40GB.

Once a month I'll probably buy a digital download game, often I will download things onto my Sky HD box and then it's general browsing.

I couldn't manage on a capped service TBH.
 
It is 8 quid more/month with bt. It is 5 for 5gb more data if you go over the limit. I think i would be better off paying for the odd occasions when I do go over the limit.
 
spoffle said:
How much is it a month? I can't imagine it's cheap enough that you wouldn't be better off doing with Plusnet's Fibre service for £22.50 a month for 80Mb/20Mb.

I personally couldn't hack a 40GB limit, I'd exceed that in a day at the most.
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i worked out with cashback you could get plusnets unlimited fibre deal for about 12.50 at the moment!

I am still tempted to go with the capped (and more expensive) bt deal because i like the tv package they offer.
 
I couldn't live with 40gb. It's just there as a limit to show you how low it is so that you will upgrade and pay a little more. You could burn through half of that in one games download from Steam.

Have you tried logging your household data usage for a month to see what you're actually using day to day?
 
Things which people forget are patches.

Games and otherwise.

Need to reinstall Windows? That's your allowance gone on updates.

Buy a couple of games? Allowance gone.

Even if you only play on consoles you often get gbs worth of patches in a month.

Obviously if you never game this isn't much of an issue.
 
EdwardTeach said:
i worked out with cashback you could get plusnets unlimited fibre deal for about 12.50 at the moment!

I am still tempted to go with the capped (and more expensive) bt deal because i like the tv package they offer.
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This ^

Even if you use very little a month there's no good reason to go with a capped service. These cashback deals are on almost all the time. Plusnet should be getting TV soon too.
 
It would be FAR better to have unlimited regular ADSL.

Just think about it for a second, what sense is it, to have a 40mbit connection that has 40GB cap? Thats 3 hours @ max speed

Exactly why do you want to go to fibre? What benefits do you believe it will provide for you, because there are none.
 
Online gaming uses very little. I'd say maximum 30-50MB per hour. So if you game for 3 hours per day for 30 days it's around 1.5GB.
Skype also fairly little, I'd say around 200-300MB per hour. So if you Skype for 8 hours per month it's around 2.5GB.
YouTube uses about 1-1.2GB for an hour of 1080p video. So if you watch 30 minutes of YouTube 1080p per day for 30 days it's 15GB.

So around 20GB used every month on gaming, Skype and YouTube.
 
Online gaming itself uses hardly any data, the patches etc are what will hurt you.

If you do choose to stream / download HD content then it's going to be 1.5Gigs an hour which will go through your cap fast.
 
I average 120Gb a month, that's gaming, skype, youtube/streaming. The big hitters are patches, downloading new games and music. 40Gb would last me a week at best, 1-2 days at worst. I'd never go back to a capped package.
 
40GB a day would be a problem for me, 40GB a month would be awful.

Whats the point in fast broadband if you're not downloading much? Better off going for unlimited slower broadband.
 
Despite all the good advice I have opted to go with BTand ttake the cap, so I will let you know how it goes!

I am really not a big user of YouTube. Most of the media streaming we do in this house would be for iplayer, 4od etc. Will now be able to do all of that through Bt's TV set up and none of the data used for BT vision is counted as part of the cap.

My big worry is games and patches. I am going to try and be careful for a few months and live with the cap, but if it is too difficult I will just upgrade the contract.

If it wasn't for bt's television stuff, I would deffinately have gone with plusnet as they are clearly offering a better deal for unlimited fibre. If they do add TV to their offering them maybe I will pick them in 12 months.
 
EdwardTeach said:
Despite all the good advice I have opted to go with BTand ttake the cap, so I will let you know how it goes!

I am really not a big user of YouTube. Most of the media streaming we do in this house would be for iplayer, 4od etc. Will now be able to do all of that through Bt's TV set up and none of the data used for BT vision is counted as part of the cap.

My big worry is games and patches. I am going to try and be careful for a few months and live with the cap, but if it is too difficult I will just upgrade the contract.

If it wasn't for bt's television stuff, I would deffinately have gone with plusnet as they are clearly offering a better deal for unlimited fibre. If they do add TV to their offering them maybe I will pick them in 12 months.
Click to expand...

Wow *facepalm*
 
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