What allowance do you have on your home broadband?

[QED]

Have got 10GB which I've had for a while and has always been fine although now I have a wii that you can do i player through and also an iPad nd have discovered the 4od and other TV apps I think I may use rather more GB in streaming. You can upgrade my package to 60GB for an extra £5 a month and was wondering what other people's allowances were.

Unlimited with Sky

Unlimited with Virgin .

Unlimited with bt when I upgraded from 40gb my bill went down about £2 a month for unlimited?! But we use loads as we have iPhones, iPads iPods etc do easier just to go for unlimited.

Maybe I need to investigate more and see if I can get unlimited. Although seeing as 10GB has been OK so far it does seem quite a big leap.

Are you with plus net? We are and had the same options. The 10G is daytime/ evening and not overnight. Overnight use age is free. We did all downloading overnight and stayed well within our 10G limit.

I am with plus net :) Is there some way to download things on I player overnight and then watch them in the day as I can see that would help with the allowance.

We put our router on a 24 hour timer. We found we tend to be off the internetat about 9.30pm so set up downloads just before Internet went off and then the timer turned the Internet (router power) back on at midnight. The timer was only a couple of pounds and has a switch you can slide across to override the timer to permanent on, so if you're enjoying surfing its easy enough to slide it across and then back again when you go to bed.

iPlayer has a setting to restrict downloads (of episodes in a series) so they are downloaded from 00:00 to 07:00, but a timer might be an idea.

I use PlusNet too, and while I currently have Sky TV, I would not switch phone service to them (or TalkTalk) as my line rental is low (under 7 quid) with Primus and I use 1899.com for my landline to landline calls (5p per call to 01/02/03 even if we chat for 2-3 hours, and 1p a minute to USA and under 4p/min to most of Europe and many other popular destinations [English colonies etc]).

(NB Primus and indirect access services like 1899, 18185 etc are mentioned on the MoneySavingExpert.com web site as some of the best deals around.)

I did see a thread the other day about trials of Netflix and assumed the majority must be on "unlimited" packages else they'd run into some major quota problems (unless they actually did run into problems much later on when the ISP fees were due!).

For ANTagony It would be better, if possible, to leave the router on all the time (otherwise the BT exchange hardware thinks there is a fault if your router is regularly disconnecting, and the result can be that the exchange automatically reduces your connection speed [semi-permanently] "just in case" that makes the disconnections stop).

If you're not using wireless but have cables between the router and the different computers, then having a cheap ethernet hub as the first thing that the router is connected to, and using a timeswitch for the hub would mean the link from exchange to router would stay on, but your home PCs would only be online when the hub has power.

Oh, forgot to mention, there's another ISP, Clara.Net (which has been around for 15+ years I think) with their *> SOHO division

100gig with Opal (Talk talk) business (I was on Nidram before they took over) £6.99 a month I think it is what ever isn't used gets carried over to the next month.

re Opal - do they still

360GB - 60GB peak, 300GB offpeak (midnight to 9am) with IDNet. But it does cost a bit!

Are the unlimited packages really unlimited... or if you read the very small print, does traffic management kick in at say 100GB?

I have 120GB per month, 8am-Midnight. Midnight to 8am is uncapped. This is via PlusNet Fibre Extra.

Just looked at usage history... I'm currently averaging 25GB a month 8am-Midnight. I need to download more movies

Sorry about my truncated post (using mobile phone) - was going to ask if Opal still insists on 24 months contract for the phone line rental ?

Re "Unlimited" I think the majority of "Fair Usage Policy" descriptions are too vague and a way to avoid stating an explicit limit. Seems another "loophole" that Ofcom should scrap because it allows the ISPs to move the goalposts as much as they like, or even simply use FUP to get rid of one individual without him/her being able to prove they had been picked out as they annoyed someone working at the ISP's offices....

Lucky you, Nick - I remember you saying you were soon able to get fibre - I moved location to (attempt) to get higher than 20 Mbps but unfortunately the few streets around me on Merseyside don't have 30/50/100 Mbps access from VirginMedia, and fibre isn't due for several months. However, my phone line is much shorter to the exchange and 9/10 Mbps is significantly better than the 1 Mbps which I was getting in N Wales a few months ago (it went down from 2.5 Mbps when Openreach upgraded the exchange to ADSL 2+ !!!)

I'm clearly doing too much on my connection :) (watching LoveFilm, downloading BBC shows with iPlayer mostly overnight) as these are some recent usage figures:

... Peak, Off-Peak, Total

18 Mar - 18 Apr 58.81GB 74.55GB 133.36GB
18 Feb - 18 Mar 52.07GB 69.76GB 121.83GB
12 Feb - 18 Feb 43.73GB 17.47GB 61.2GB

NB there was some strange reset on my account on 12 Feb so only part of my first month is shown!

I also use close to 15 GB a month on Three (I went over in March and an extra 100 MB cost me a tenner or so!) and my mobile on Three has "all you can eat" so in theory I could watch webcams, listen to radio or download huge quantities of data from USENET or on peer-to-peer.

Clara.Net has a number of home/ SOHO accounts and one is aimed at gamers, at 12.99 +VAT each month with a daytime (0800-1800 Mon-Fri) allowance of 10 GB/month and no specified limit off peak... see *> claranetgamers.co.uk SOHO site