No, not really pron, honest, but I thought I'd get that out of the way before someone else said it! 😛

Just gone to Sky with a 2gb/month limit, and used 4.5gb in the first month

Q1) Is that download ONLY they measure? Becasue I do upload lots of pics. 2gb of BBB pics on Monday alone!

Q2) iPlayer downloads – roughly how much is a 1hr programme in GB? Becasue I think that's what's done it……

Yeah, we had trouble with iplayer TV watching too. I reckon it's that.

Oops. BBC iplayer can be a gig a program. More if HD.

2Gb a month? Thats not a great deal these days

2GB a month – are you sure? Not 20GB?

pron without animals is lower bandwidth

i player programmes can typically be a few hundred meg. Spotify will add to that. downloading pron even more so.

2gb a month limit is, for want of a nicer way of putting it, ****ing ****. sounds more like a mobile contract limit. why would anyone sign up to that when you can get uncapped contracts with be and similar for around £10/m? 😕

i think, and in no way am convinced that i'm correct, but i think… that its data transfer as apposed to 2gb downloads…so uploads as well as downloads. youtube and i-player can be pretty data hungry esp in HD mode. i use the internet for about 5 minutes a month at home but i pay for "unlimited" as our housemate spends his days on youtube and online gaming

My mistake standard def holby city: 629MB

Are you sure the 2GB limit isn't the bandwidth speed? Downlaod limits are usually tucked away in the small print. Even most 'unlimited' contracts specify fair use around the 40GB mark.

It's £7.50 a month to uncap your limit on sky, we did it as 2Gb is utterly taking the piddle.
With that we worked out that it's still cheaper than going elsewhere just for the broadband (circa £10pcm for others as said above)

Sky did this knowing full well that they could advertise a very high speed with a very limited service for free then have their proper unlimited broadband at a small premium, cheeky buggers!

Spotify will add to that.

What's spotify?

2gb a month limit is, for want of a nicer way of putting it, ****ing ****. sounds more like a mobile contract limit. why would anyone sign up to that when you can get uncapped contracts with be and similar for around £10/m?

Becasue it's FREE!! 🙂
£7.50 for unlimited, which I might do, but I only down loaded some stuff to watch at work whilst it was slack, and again, only becasue I had a new laptop to do it with!
So I might not do that again, much.

Can I repeat – Is it download ONLY they measure? I UPLOAD shedloads of stuff, but rarely download until the last couple of weeks….

Spotify is a free music player the cool kids use.

The iplayer stream will change depending on how quick a connection it can get but generally about 500-600kbit/s. That's about 250MB an hour. If you're using the HD versions, they can be several times that.

I believe the Sky 2GB limit is for both directions, not just download.

PP – it's almost certainly both. Sky will say on their website or under the T&C's you signed up to.

I believe the Sky 2GB limit is for both directions, not just download

Bugger.

2Gb download speeds, NOT ON YOUR NELLY!

Typical data allowance can be 20Gb or even 40Gb, but 2Gb is rubbish by anyones standards.
Fair usage policy may or may not apply once you reach your limit and the data allowance can be just downloads, or can include both up and down.
My talk £6.99 is up to 40Gb so Sky are weeing in your shoes now.

Calm down dear!

I believe the Sky 2GB limit is for both directions, not just download

+1

It'll be total usage I reckon.

TBH Sky was useless when we were with them – made working from home untenable when they decided to throttle ssh connections to about 2kbs. Really was a case of you get what you pay for.

Now paying a lot more for Namesco broadband and it's worth every penny.

Not sure what allowance Virgin Mediocre is but I've caned it & never been charged. Had some good download speeds of late, 1,200 kbit/s the other day.
None of this really helps though does it.

iPlayer streaming (watching it as it comes rather than waiting for a download to finish) either was, or is now, peer-to-peer. Which means you'll upload just as much as you download.

Ignore me, that's bollocks. This is what I half remembered:

One of the key features of the original iPlayer download service was the use of peer-to-peer technology to enable the distribution of large video files (i.e. TV programmes) to scale effectively.

What they did with me was they sent me a warning that if I went over again in a certain amount of Time I would be bumped up to the next chargeband which would be £5 a month. It happened but I could downgrade it again the next month.

What they did with me was they sent me a warning that if I went over again in a certain amount of Time I would be bumped up to the next chargeband which would be £5 a month. It happened but I could downgrade it again the next month

Yeah, that's what we've just had. I think I'll ignore it and see if they only charge me if I go over! 🙂

Check the small print. I am on a capped service (10GB) but it is for downloads only. There is no traffic shaping or fair use policy, I just pay extra if I need (which is only once). That said we now have iPLayer built into our telly so chances are at 1Gb or so per hour of TV we may go over again.

I've done some shopping around on some of the deals that offer unlimited downloads subject to "fair usage". I think it was O2 who had something tucked away in their ambiguous fair use policy that claimed that about 10GB per month is reasonable. As internet TV takes off this is going to be a hot topic I reckon.

Broadband in the UK seems rather sucky – the only limit I have is a 50 Gb monthly limit for newsgroups.

If you ignore the letters they'll just put you on the unlimited tariff

Unlimited BB is very easy to come by. It's just not likely to be the cheapest rock-bottom deal.

I get free unlimited from Orange because my mobile bill is over £35 I think it is.

We had the same letter, Katie was using i player and updating I tunes. Went over 2 months later and got bumped up automatic

Tracey

Unlimited BB is very easy to come by.

Last time I checked, there was only one company doing truly "unlimited" broadband in the the UK – and that's Sky. Everyone else has a fair usage policy.

(May not be true now, but it was about a year ago certainly).

just go to unlimted and be done with it.

i only pay £7 a month

^ with sky that is, just haggled from £12 recently when i stopped sports

Well yeah, "unlimited" rarely is in practise. However some people's fair usage policy is much fairer than others 🙂

i download lots of music and (used to before baby came along 9 weeks ago)play alot of onlien PS3 and they never sent me a letter in 4 years.

however, the father in lw got a letter from (talk talk i think) telling him to calm the **** down… he does download 'moives' everyday . every night

you'd have to download a LOT of music to get the same file size(s) as just one hour on iPlayer. Think how many tracks you can get on a 1Gb MP3 player – that is about 1 hour of streamed TV

I have a 60gb a month usage limit during normal daytime hours (7am-midnight) – useful for Iplayer
and unlimited during midnight-7am – useful for cough torrenting cough, for £11.75 with Force 9/Plusnet

Virgin Media is the way to go if you can get it. All the iPlayer stuff is available trough the TV and the Broadband is unlimited.

why would anyone sign up to that

Yep, cos its free. I just changed to it to reduce the sky bill and the bloke said they warn you 3 times, then automatically put you onto the paid service.
It is up & down loads btw.

Too much porn… by brf, on Flickr

Just checked my usage – I've gone 265% on my usage allowance 😕

2GB really isn't much is it.

"we’ll upgrade you if you go over your allowance again within the next 5 months."