Mobile Broadband on PAYG, and Typical Bandwidth Usage

[JoeFX]

Two questions...

1) I'm going to be moving house in the next few weeks and as such I'll probably be without internet for a short-while. I'm wondering if it's worth getting some mobile broadband on a short-term Pay-As-You-Go basis, just to cover me while I wait to be reconnected at the new place. I've seen T-Mobile offering a 'pay up front deal' for £45 which lasts three-months. It's "Unlimited Usage" which is limited to 2GB a month . Anyone done a similar short-team deal before or know of any other decent/better deals that are worth looking at?

2) Any idea how much bandwidth your average PC game-playing user would require/use in a single month, playing stuff like MW2 and L4D2 three or four nights a week? i.e. would a 2gb per/month cap suffice, assuming I can get a decent enough speed in the first place?

 

[Morfik]

1) Check quidco or topcashback. Several networks are offering cashback on mobile broadband such that the dongle won't actually cost you anything or very little. You can also get some deals on it if you're already a mobile phone customer with that network or are getting broadband with them.

2) It's not the speed it's the latency that's an issue with gaming. Typically it's around 200-300ms but can go as high as several seconds.

Stuff like WoW is just about playable but I wouldn't recommend raids. You may struggle with FPS as latency is everything. If you do get it working then 2GB a month is plenty just for the gaming part, but remember any patches that you need to get to play will eat into that limit.