Extreme usage?

SCOOP 64

Would 400gb of broadband use a month be regarded as extreme?

TheDriver

Nope, about normal in a family home

jca

I wish. I'm using 3 times that!!

Marlow

About 2 years ago 20-40GB/month was normal.

These days 200-500GB/month is normal for a regular family. Streaming, facebook (auto-playing videos), snapchat, Sky channel-updates, Playstation and XBox online downloads (30-50GB per game), Windows updates (10GB not uncommon), iTunes, Apple updates etc. have pushed usage way up.

There is a reason, that for example even Three had to bite the bullet and recently upped the cap on their 30EUR mobile broadband package to 750GB.

/M

SCOOP 64

Reason, with Permanet €50 a month, been with them a few years now as not many options elsewhere ,anyway they rang me to say my usage is too high according to their fair usage policy which is 40gb a month, now we have used 400gb in one month, basically told too use less, now the bill is still €50 a month regardless, but the night before call the broadband was at a snails pace, but that night after call back to normal, have 2 sons in evening on xbox live i have laptop, check emails etc.. stream a film once or twice a month,it is not used during day,surprised i hit the 400 to be honest.

Marlow

SCOOP 64 wrote: »

have 2 sons in evening on xbox live

There you go. That's your biggest consumer right there.

They download ONE game and you've hit your limit.

Also, if you steam at FullHD 1080p, you could be pulling up to 20 Mbit/s.

/M

SCOOP 64

Try stick to my 40gb and download a few emails.

ED E

SCOOP 64 wrote: »

broadband

SCOOP 64 wrote: »

40gb

Thats midband level stuff. Even mobile network operators are going as high as 750GB.

You will either fight with your sons or continue to go over until they terminate your service or force you to a business plan. I'd start shopping around (if possible).

dr.fuzzenstein

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/87

7 gig per hour for 4k!
Really, any internet provider that still offers a data cap at all are living in the stone age of modems and static websites from the 90's.
This moronic attitude of "but our Oompa Loompas have to spend 8 hours down the mines for each gig of data! Do you think that stuff grows on trees?" doesn't belong in this century.
I once asked my provider here in Germany what the data cap is and was asked "what's a data cap?", so I asked about fair usage and they said "go nuts".
In Ireland my data cap was 30 gig.
I can blow through that with 3 hours of Netflix here.
40 gig is an utter joke and I would ask my provider to please step into the current century.

Marlow

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

[
I once asked my provider here in Germany what the data cap is and was asked "what's a data cap?", so I asked about fair usage and they said "go nuts".

Germany is a different internet/broadband landscape entirely though. And caps also exist there:

If you go for 16 Mbit/s DSL with 1&1 with a 100GB cap, then you pay a 10er for the first 12 months .. after that, they do the same rip off number like Eir and up your price to 25 quid.

And VDSL comes in 50 Mbit/s and 100 Mbit/s flavors .. with different pricing, while here you'd get whatever the line can carry. But then again .. either of their prices are generally lower, than what is charged in Ireland.

Fact is though, that Germany doesn't really offer any of the broadband speeds, that you can get in Ireland.

And if you think, that the filtering of Virgin or the 3 strikes policy of Eir is bad .. well .. in Germany you immediately get a solicitors letter and a fine for downloading copyrighted content.

Give you another example: AA ISP - https://www.aaisp.net.uk/ .. They don't specify the speed. They just give you whatever is the fastest that they can get their fingers on. And your pricing then is based on your usage.

Every ISP and every part of the world has a different approach to things.

/M

colm_mcm

The other thing to keep in mind is that there are companies that serve sparsely populated areas and only have so much of a budget for investing in and running their equipment. When you have users using bit amounts of data it impacts on other users, then the value that these relatively low users are getting is diminished. There are reasons the big players don’t have 100% coverage on high speed products, the return on investment is too small. these smaller companies fill a niche for people who just want something usable in comparison to fixed line. Of course in 2018 everyone should have everything, but I think it’s wrong to criticise smaller usage caps on services like the OP is talking about.

Yakuza

Last 3 full months for us :(download and upload) - 900GB, 650GB (away some of Christmas) and 800GB. 300GB so far this month and about half way through the billing cycle. 5 in the house, the kids stream the sh1t out of Netflix / YouTube, PlayStation gaming / patches, I'd use a fair amount of streaming myself and some gaming and the missus would stream TV / radio from Spain most days too.

Marlow

Yakuza wrote: »

Last 3 full months for us :(download and upload) - 900GB, 650GB (away some of Christmas) and 800GB. 300GB so far this month and about half way through the billing cycle. 5 in the house, the kids stream the sh1t out of Netflix / YouTube, PlayStation gaming / patches, I'd use a fair amount of streaming myself and some gaming and the missus would stream TV / radio from Spain most days too.

Sounds about normal for a tech savvy family.

/M

vandriver

This is mine:
21 Jan - 20 Feb 422.79 GB 29.70 GB 452.49 GB
21 Dec - 20 Jan 740.99 GB 29.45 GB 770.44 GB
21 Nov - 20 Dec 405.96 GB 14.71 GB 420.67 GB
21 Oct - 20 Nov 502.11 GB 17.19 GB 519.30 GB

ED E

FWIW, we were breaching 2TB/mo in '15.

dr.fuzzenstein

Marlow wrote: »

Every ISP and every part of the world has a different approach to things.

/M

I'll dig out the particulars of my contract at some stage, but it's mostly bundles in Germany, your TV, phone and internet together.
You really have to be on your toes because the call center staff talk extremely fast, answer your questions without answering them and just whack you round the ears with offers which they just add to the contract without letting you even think about it.

As for the approach of Irish ISPs, their attitude is that bytes only grow in the most central jungles of South America, where they have to be caught one by one by indigenous tribes using blow pipes and then shipped back to Ireland via steam ship. Thousands of men lose their life getting you those bytes, that's why you can't have many of them.
That's if the King of Ireland has deemed you Worthy of getting internet in the first place..
Ah, the joys of rural living.

Marlow

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

As for the approach of Irish ISPs, their attitude is that bytes only grow in the most central jungles of South America, where they have to be caught one by one by indigenous tribes using blow pipes and then shipped back to Ireland via steam ship. Thousands of men lose their life getting you those bytes, that's why you can't have many of them.
That's if the King of Ireland has deemed you Worthy of getting internet in the first place..
Ah, the joys of rural living.

You can thank the government for that .. and ComReg.

The problem in Ireland is, that it costs ISPs 10x and more to get data from for example Galway to Dublin, than what it costs them then to transport the same data from Dublin to Paris.

Government MAN infrastructure is charged at about 30x the going rate in Dublin or elsewhere in Europe. That's infrastructure, that has been paid for with tax money and that sort of amount of profit margin wouldn't really be needed.

Also, the Goverment nor Comreg have no interest in regulating the core backhaul market (dark fiber, etc.) apart from for OpenEIR .. but in their case they don't make it mandatory to offer that product to other providers.

Even the base price wholesale line rental price is twice that of what broadband in lets Germany retails at, at times. That's before you've hauled the traffic through the country and out.

So you add 1+1 and you know, why traffic/bandwidth in Ireland is so expensive and why providers have to spend A LOT MORE on their national infrastructure than for example a german ISP. Or be conservative with usage.

/M

SCOOP 64

Im just going to continue to use as is, paying €50 a month and then telling everyone for emails and Facebook only would not be worth it, i know they will slow it too unusable at end of month or even cancel my contract if they can, but what else to do.

Marlow

SCOOP 64 wrote: »

Im just going to continue to use as is, paying €50 a month and then telling everyone for emails and Facebook only would not be worth it, i know they will slow it too unusable at end of month or even cancel my contract if they can, but what else to do.

Actually ... something that really saves you bandwidth is to enable data saver mode in Facebook. At least in the smartphone/tablet applications. Also a good idea when you try to bring the data usage on your mobile down.

Videos wills stop to autoplay then, etc.

/M

TheDriver

Marlow wrote: »

Actually ... something that really saves you bandwidth is to enable data saver mode in Facebook. At least in the smartphone/tablet applications. Also a good idea when you try to bring the data usage on your mobile down.

Videos wills stop to autoplay then, etc.

/M

It's good for just stopping videos playing anyways, very annoying

SCOOP 64

Saying that though could only get 1.46mpbs download tonight ,couldn't even watch a film, don't know if this is the way Permanet are going to go with me, was looking at Aptus, 150gb a month +add unlimited data for €5 a month but thats 10gb a day fair usage ( not sure if i get the 150gb with that?)
Download Speed 20m Upload Speed 2m, (Permanet is 10m and upload 512kb ),
any thoughts?

http://aptus.ie/broadband-and-phone-2/

rogue-entity

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

I once asked my provider here in Germany what the data cap is and was asked "what's a data cap?", so I asked about fair usage and they said "go nuts".
In Ireland my data cap was 30 gig.

In contrast back in 2013, you would struggle to find a mobile operator in Germany more than 750MB of data allowance, compared with, the 15GB you could get from eMobile at the time when even Vodafone were offering 1GB.

That situation has not changed much, Germans will refer to "Das ist Neuland".

Marlow wrote: »

Give you another example: AA ISP - https://www.aaisp.net.uk/ .. They don't specify the speed. They just give you whatever is the fastest that they can get their fingers on. And your pricing then is based on your usage.

I'd sell my nan to have AAISP here, they may be expensive but you get a superior service.

Marlow

rogue-entity wrote: »

I'd sell my nan to have AAISP here, they may be expensive but you get a superior service.

There are regional providers in Ireland, that are quite inventive. I'd stick Westnet and Airwire in that category. Not quite the same as AAISP, but in comparison to other mainstream providers, the equivalent.

/M