Sooo, just before I go nutso on BT broadband...

[duchesse]

Can somebody please explain to me in words of one or two syllables how it's actually possible to suddenly start going over our monthly usage allowance by 20GB a month (!!!) Resulting in a charge of £1 extra pound per Gb and therefore doubling the cost of our broadband.

Could somebody please help me contextualise how big 20Gb is, because I thought we'd have to be downloading a film every day to reach 40Gb (which is what they say we are using). Which we aren't in any way shape or form.

As far as I'm aware we have changed nothing about anything to do with the system in the last three months. In fact we recently discovered that our line had been capped at 150kbps, and actual download speeds were about 8-20 kbps most of hte time, with peaks to 40 kbps- enough time to go off and make a cup of tea while waiting for pages to load. We complained and they lifted the limit to 1500kbps. I just didn't think it was even possible to use that much allowance at that sort of debit but I may be confused, and would appreciate as much info on how to calculate that sort of thing as possible before wading in...

A full DVD is nearly 5gb if that helps any.

Do you know what's going on with your home network? Is anyone in your house using any file sharing software to get things like movies or music?

Also if you're using a wireless router is it secured? A neighbour could be using your connection without your knowledge...

Finally presuming you're using Windows it would be worth running some like AdAware (www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php) to make sure that there's nothing bad on your computers that is chewing up your bandwidth.

Have you tried posting on the BT forum?

It would appear that loads of people are equally confused - I never knew that watching Cbeebies on iPlayer would result in receiving a warning email that we had gone well over our download limit and were to be charged £1 per unit.

I don't understand their system at all and they certainly seem to hit you with all sorts of hidden charges after the contract has been signed.

We have BT broadband and at the woeful download speed we have I am also unsure how we could poss use 16 GB each month but apparently we do. We use the Internet a lot, but don't watch movies/listen to music. However, when I rang them last night BT said they could move me to unlimited for £15.49 per month (normally £25, discount as been w them for a while and now off contract and trying to get us to re-sign). Why not move to unlimited, so you no longer have to worry about how much you use?

Thanks all.

Badger- I did consider that someone might be using our router without our knowledge, but our nearest neighbours are about 100 metres away so I'm not convinced they'd be able to.

Pumphrey- you could be right! It could well be iPlayer now you come to mention it.

bunny- thank you for that- it's certainly worth seriously considering- I wonder if I can squeeze the same low rate out of them?

I think that iPlayer uses about 2/3 of a GB per hour of viewing.

Some downloads from channel 4 or Five used to be 300-400 MB for 35 to 45 minutes so it depends on whether iPlayer is offering better quality...

I've just signed with PlusNet (owned by BT) which is soon (12 April) to change prices.

Their new 60 GB/month account (Plusnet Extra) will be 11.49 or 17.99 a month - lower price applies if you are on a Market 3 exchange - one with competition from Orange, AOL, etc.

They have a usage meter unlike BT and they allow you to set a cost limit so if you ever go over, the connection will run at 128 kbps.

They have a "Value" account which is 5.99/11.99 but will be 6.49/12.99 from 12.04.10 giving 10 GB a month. Again you can set limit at monthly cost level and never pay more.

Can you get some sort of monitor or meter so you know how much you are using? I downloaded one but never managed to make it work

There's a traffic monitor at www.ThinkBroadband.com but there can be problems if you have several PCs and perhaps some games consoles like X-Box or PlayStation, and of course if someone has an iPhone or iPod Touch then downloads from iTunes and general browsing would not be added.

A few routers have a traffic monitor built in, and there are free software applications which will gather stats from the router so it should be fairly easy to find some combination which will track your usage.

Of course, BT probably wants people to switch to their 'unlimited' account.

Thanks for that

Thanks all- we opted to go for an unlimited package for £5 more a month. Now that my husband has managed to get into his bt account, we've noticed that the extra usage started when our photography student au pair joined us, so she is probably making heavier use of the internet than we expected. No biggie, we just upped our package. Just wish we'd known sooner, but they didn't start sending emails about our excessive usage until January, although it was visible in the online account from September. ho-hum.

If she's serious about her photography she might be working with images in the Raw format and they can be huge.

JPGs, which us normal photographers usually use, aren't perfect and when they're saved they loose a little bit of detail every time. We wouldn't notice but a pro would.

It might be worth asking what the au pair is up to, it could be photos, but if it's illegal file sharing then you could be held liable for it.