On 10 Mar 2005, T i m wrote
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 14:22:25 GMT, Mike Harrison
wrote:
(I've snipped not because I disagree with what's being said, but
because I'd like to insert a real-life measuring thing.)
This has to do with the 750/now 2MB service. (The 3GB/month limit on
the 300/now 1MB service is clearly designed to encourage lower-speed-
but-higher-bandwidth users to pay more in line with what the amount of
data they're transferring.)
Context: I've been on ntl's "512/became 600/then 750/now 2MB" service
for over 4 years now, and have always been happy with it. The best bit
was the "always on", but one of the major attractions (having come from
dial-up) was not having to worry about what I downloaded
(size/time/cost).
Magic. So I was concerned when they first brought in the 1GB/day
"unenforced unless you hit it too often" cap. But I had *no idea* what
my usage was (that was the great thing about it), so about a year ago,
I started measuring my usage.
(It's pointless to try and talk about "average use": that's the whole
point of having broadband -- you do with it what suits you. But for
context, my usage is that I work from home and am in front of the
computer for between 4 and 10 hours a day; I do a lot of web-based
research (archival maps and stuff), and I maintain my own ocmputer. So
I download what I want, when I want; I listen to streaming radio
(between 1 and 5 hours a day); I update programs; I download software
to try it out and/or discard it; I upload files to the office a couple
of times a week (around 10-15 MB per file); and very occasionally --
every couple of months or so -- I might do a big download of something
like a Linux ISO image (a CD-worth of data). I don't do games, and I
don't do file-sharing.)
Measuring that sort of usage over the past year, I have used over 3 GB
-- *per month* -- just once (a Linux month). All the other months have
been between 1.8 and 2.3 GB. That's per *month*.
In my experience, it takes a hell of a lot of file transferring to hit
1 GB per day; if people are actually hitting that sort of figure on a
regular basis, they should be paying more for the amount of 1s and 0s
they're shifting through the cables.
--
Cheers,
Harvey
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