50gb monthly allowance enough?

[looney]

My Uncle wants to get broadband at his house as he needs it for work and for basic browsing too so his asked me to choose one for him. He'll probably mostly do normal web browsing rather then download loads of stuff everweek. Anyway I've narrowed down the choice to this:

http://aolbroadband.co.uk/pages/line.../platinum2.jsp

(Please no AOL bashing, we have it our house and its fine so there )

Anyway as you can see it has a 50gb limit a month, so i'm wondering would this be enough for light to moderate use? How much bandwidth does a normal website take? What happens if it exceeds?

Another choice was one of the o2 packages which is £12, but it doesnt have any call packages, which would be nice.

Anyway would welcome any recommendations too, must be under £15 a month btw.

Thanks in advance

[Jay]

fine for basic web use.

[andy572]

Not knowing what you mean by "work" (uploading data or just more site browsing?) or being able to quantify "light to moderate use", I can nonetheless add something that may prove helpful.

Whilst preparing to change an account last year, I checked my uncle's monthly figures for the previous twelve months. He has a few sessions per day in which he spends time Web browsing and collecting his e-mail (just plain sites, nothing like YouTube) and his greatest usage for one month amounted to 400-meg. Even with visits to sites like YouTube, 50-gig should leave you with plenty of breathing room...

Just for further peace of mind, you might want to check the conditions regarding uploading and downloading, and whether traffic in both directions counts towards the 'allowance'. Most ISPs do include upload transfers within that figure, but it'd make things even better if that were not the case. Having said that - just to emphasise the point - even at 25-gig, a 'light' user would have to really put the hours in at the PC to reach a point where they needed to think about any data limits!

As for the exceeding of those limits, again, you'll have to read AOL's terms and conditions. I'm afraid that I'm not familiar with them and can only offer a mention of the ways of different companies, namely in the form of charges per extra gig transferred or throttling of the connection until the next month's renewal date. Some companies apparently also have an unspoken leeway, where there'll be no penalty as long as a subscriber doesn't repeatedly broach the agreed limit. Better check, though!

[jackvdbuk]

50gb is loads for light browsing really, to make sure you dont pass you could always install one of them network bandwidth monitors for peace of mind.

why not just go for an unlimited one anyway ?

[kopite]

I remember talking with other members of staff when the Caps where introduced at Zen and the average home user hardly uses much bandwidth at all.

Our zen8000 lite package has a 5 gb cap and Nearly every customer on that service gets nowhere near the cap. Very few home users who do normal browsing and email access will get over a gig worth of usage a month.

Just remembereed though. Iplayer can be a bit of a bandwidth hog but even so a 50 gb cap is plenty for even an avid iplayer watcher

[aidanjt]

50GB is more than enough for web browsing, email, and flash streaming media viewing. Also, obligatory LOL AOLer!

[tonpal]

I play on-line games, download the odd bit of software and general internet use and as a rule use about 3-4 GB per month.

[magneticman]

no, it's more than enough for anything.

I'm on 40gb a month and it's absolutely fine, and I'm on the internet doing one thing or the other all the time.

[aidanjt]

no, it's more than enough for anything.

I wouldn't say *anything*, I frequently grace over 50GB/m. Just as well I'm not capped, eh?

[Jay]

I would put myself in the heavy browsering area, I never torrent anything unless its a Linux disto (so if I do it will be a few times a month) I use iPlayer, you tube etc and my girlfriend also uses youtube, myspace. I use my connection for work and also gaming.

in the past 7 days I have used..

Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [MB/GB]: 110.84 / 1.44

I havent downloaded any distros though.

[Lucio]

My wife and I share a connection, both of us play online games, watch videos online etc, and even we only hit 10-15GB a month.

It'd be a real struggle to hit 50GB unless you start downloading some serious sized files such as entire DVD's, pirated software and similiar.

[looney]

Thanks for all the replies, appreciate it alot as I was slightly confuzzled on what to recommend, but looks like 50gb should be enough.

Not sure exactly what his work on computer involves, but I assume it's connecting to his workplace to check out bookings, accounts those sort of stuff, and basic web browsing like job sites etc. So I think that should be alright, would of gone for the 02 unlimited but dont think they have any call packages.

anyway thanks for the comments

[Zak33]

My wife and I share a connection, both of us play online games, watch videos online etc, and even we only hit 10-15GB a month.

It'd be a real struggle to hit 50GB unless you start downloading some serious sized files such as entire DVD's, pirated software and similiar.

post of the week.

You just dont needs 50 gig, so dont fret.

[grayg1]

get Internode monthly useage meter (MUM)

It doesn't work properly unless you have Internodes internet (doesn't record each day and total it up etc.)
However it is good at telling you how much you have download in a single day in real time.

[Blitzen]

50GB is more than enough for 99% of users.

With AOL though, after the move to CFW, you will not hit speeds fast enough to download that much even if you wanted to.

O2 is very good though fella (and cheaper than AOHell)

Also, obligatory LOL AOLer!

+1 hehe

[peterb]

More than enough - I am a reasonable heavy general web user (and host a web server) and there are 4 other computers on the network. Their combined useage rarely exceeds 5Gb a month.