Few questions about contracts & online radio

[htid]

Hi,

I've always been on PAYG so I just have a few questions. So to start with, I know that you can either go directly to the provider, or go to someone like carphone warehouse, but what's the difference and why would/should I go to one rather than the other?

Also I want to know how much data allowence to get, but this depends on if I can listen to online radio. I've never used a smartphone so I'm not sure how they work...do I just download winamp and go to the website (I use www.di.fm most of the time) and it'll play like on the PC? Is it even possible to listen to online streams through a phone (I'll be getting the Desire HD) and through 3G or is it too slow and would result in constant buffering? I'd be listening at 96kb so logically I'm assuming I'd use 96kb of data every second, meaning I'd use 337mb an hour?? Is that right? Does that mean it's not feasible to listen to online radio on a phone? I'm just considering if to get 500mb or 1gb but both seem minute if I wanted to do that.

Anyway thanks for any help given!

[htid]

Actually someone has just told me about a company called giffgaff. Anyone heard of them or had any experiences with them?

[Funkstar]

Usually people go through third party resellers to either get a better deal than from the networks, or to get handsets that aren't available directly on that network. Other benefits are that handsets are more likely to be unbranded and completely unlocked.

As for your radio, yes you can listen to it on your handset with headphones no problem. The stream you are listening to is 96kbit, so that means aroung 43.2MB an hour. A 500MB limit on your mobile data would only give you 10 hours of listening a month (with some data spare for other things like downloading apps, using Facebook and checking emails etc).