When browsing through the latest broadband deals you may notice that some come with a set download allowance whilst others advertise themselves as being unlimited. Without a little explanation these two options can be fairly confusing, so read on if you want to work out whether you can cope with a download allowance or whether you want to opt for an unlimited service.
A download allowance is typically written in terms of gigabytes, or GB. Some download allowances are as little as 1GB and some will exceed 40GB. A download allowance governs how much data you can download in a given monthly period and at the beginning of each month your usage will reset back to zero, so you can start all over again. There is usually no way to carry over any unused download allowance to the next month, so picking a package that has the right amount for you can be difficult.
1GB of data used to be a huge amount, but in the modern world it is now really rather restrictive. For example, a typical music track is roughly 5MB in size and there are 1000MB to 1GB, so you could download roughly 200 songs with a download allowance of 1GB. As you go up the media scale, the amount of data used by a single file will increase. A standard definition movie will equate to anywhere from 700MB to 1GB and as soon as you throw high definition film into the mix you are talking about more than 10GB for a single multimedia experience. Of course you will not only be using your broadband connection to download music and films, so it is important to think about other aspects in order to gauge your requirements.
Many people do not download films and audio directly to their PCs, but choose to stream them online. This still involves transferring all of the data to your PC, but it is only stored temporarily whilst you have the service or host website open and many catch up TV packages from popular broadcasters are included in the streaming video market. A 30 minute TV show can take up about 300MB of data use if it is a standard definition broadcast, but now many online video sites are offering high definition content, which can drastically increase the amount of data that will be downloaded in a single sitting.
An email can be just a few KB in size, which makes it a tiny fraction of a GB, so even the strictest download allowance will let you send thousands of emails every month. However, as soon as you start attaching files to your emails you will be upping their size completely, so you will have to consider your emailing requirement relative to how often you will need to send attached files. The same can be said of websites, as basic informational pages will weigh in relatively low, whilst pages which are packed with interactive elements, pictures, music, videos and other bits and bobs will require a lot more downloading.
It is very difficult to predict just how much surfing and downloading time you will be able to get out of a fixed download allowance, mostly because individual habits will vary and eat into your allotted data at different speeds. Some people predict that you will be able to get about an hour’s worth of surfing a day out of 1GB over the course of a month, which is a rough guide to use when looking at broadband deals, although if you are a heavy user you might want to consider an unlimited plan that does away with allowances.