Realistic internet usage

[NH1]

What is the average amount of data being downloaded per month nowadays? I am on talk talk and probably use 40 or 50 gig per month. Is this low by todays standards? I have not had any warnings of them or anything like that but I do watch a fair amount of films. I think they used to cap it at 40 gig per month.

[cornet]

Depends wildly and can be more than you think.

I go through 40-50GB a month just in streaming music from google play

[Ray Luxury-Yacht]

40 or 50 gig?

Well, IMHO, that's quite a lot isn't it? You must watch quite a bit of streaming video.

I don't have a landline broadband - I decided to try just tethering my home PC to my mobile phone, to save money on monthly bills. I have a contract with Vodafone which gives me 12 gig a month of interweb. (Which, by the way, has been a complete success - possibly because I can see my local Vodafone cell mast from my house - but in 2 yeras of using this method, have never had a problem or an internet drop-out or downer. And I get a connection of about 13 gig - way faster than my old Sky landline of 3 gig.)


Anyway, I am always on websites like Pistonheads and Arsebook, and watch the odd BBC iPlayer programme. Even with this use, I rarely use 12 gig - I seem to run at about 8 or 9 gig.

[anonymous-user]

I use around 40-50GB a month on average, if I am using Spotify then it can get to 80GB.

If people don't use it the ISP's won't bother building extra capacity and we will all get a worse service in the future.

[speedtwelve]

On an unlimited broadband data plan so usage not really relevant, but the Mrs and I regularly go through 120-130GB/month at home. A lot of Spotify music, Netflix, iPlayer, some online XBox shooty etc. Unfortunately we live out in the sticks so the bandwidth through the copper wire twisted-pair that comes into the house isn't exactly Earth-shattering.

[cornet]

Ray Luxury-Yacht said:

40 or 50 gig?
Well, IMHO, that's quite a lot isn't it? You must watch quite a bit of streaming video.

No video streaming, just music.

However I should point out that I work from home and an streaming music pretty much constantly during the day. 320kbps streams running for 12 hours == 1.64GB a day.

My router is saying I've done 8GB in 2 days and I've not really been actively downloading much.

I reckon 150GB - 200GB is an average month for me.


My ISP thankfully doesn't care, and didn't even care about me uploading 200GB in a week once


God only knows how much I would use if I downloaded or streamed films...

[igiveup]

150 - 200 Gb for me too. But then we stream lots of Music and Video.

[davepoth]

At idle (occasional youtube, reading news sites a bit while watching TV) I hit around 40mb/hour, roughly 5 hours a day - so assuming I do a bit more on the weekend it's about 2gb a week, something like 9gb a month.

On top of that I need to add in whatever I download. There's a couple of regular TV series so figure 700mb a week for those, or around another 2.5gb a month. Then there's streaming the F1 twice a month, for around 5 hours, which will be another 4gb or so (I guess; I've never watched the numbers). If I download a movie that's another couple of gb.

That's about 17gb before the Xbox - 100mb an hour or so, an hour or two a night maybe. So I'd guess as a person I'm at around 20gb a month, and that's what I'd consider fairly light usage.