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Megabytes replacing online hours.

By jardinier ·
Some of the bigger ISPs in Australia including Telstra BigPond (the most customers) and AOL ADSL Broadband are now meauring their plans in megabytes rather than hours. For example, instead of, say, offering 150 hours p/m for, say, $AU 25, they are ofering, say, 300 MB.

I suspect this is a deliberate ploy to allow customers to exceed the limit of their plan and be charged at a higher rate for the additional MB (Hours).

Can anyone tell my what, say 300 MB is equivalent to in terms of hours?Of course the MB will depend very highly on the amount of graphics which are being viewed, so there would be no simple ratio.

But in my personal case for example, I read newspapers online, reply to emails online, maintain my websites and do searches.

So, taking this as an example, how many hours access would I need to use up 300 MB?

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Megabytes replacing online hours.

by TheChas In reply to Megabytes replacing onlin ...

Hi Julian,

I don't get the statistics through my router.
However, when I was connecting directly to my ADSL modem, 15 MB per hour was not uncommon.

I download a lot of high resolution images, software and driver updates, and free-ware.

I could easily see myself running out of allotted bandwidth in several days.

One advantage of the by MB plan, is it places the cost of web access onto the file sharers.

Chas

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Megabytes replacing online hours.

by TheChas In reply to Megabytes replacing onlin ...

There was a similar question many months ago.

The peers sons had run up his per MB bill to over $1000 for 1 month!

We directed him to an activity monitoring utility so that he could track bandwidth usage.

I had one for dial-up from Touchstone Software.

I believe that there are several utilities posted at www.nonags.com

You likely need to combine both the download and upload bytes to get your true usage number.

Chas

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Megabytes replacing online hours.

by jardinier In reply to Megabytes replacing onlin ...

Hi TheChas. Your answer has been very helpful, but I will leave the question open to see what other info I can obtain.
You have certainly vindicated my suspicion as to why the ISPs play this sneaky trick. I am keeping my AOL dial-up account for thetime being, but the best dial-up plan I have encountered in Australia, which I have also signed up for, is from ihug which offers genuinely unlimited access and downloads for $AU 25 per month, if you pay for four months in advance. Many thanks.

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Megabytes replacing online hours.

by magellanix In reply to Megabytes replacing onlin ...

Ok let's do some mathematics here :-D
300MB. A 56Kbps modem can download at (In theory) 56000/8/1024=6.8359375KBps
300MB = 1024 * 300 = 307200KB So. 307200 / 6.8359375 = 44939.63 Seconds = 749 Minutes = 12.48 Hours
This result is if you download nonstop, at the highest speed. Ofcourse, in reality, this depends on many factors, line quality, network status, Operating syste etc... all that crap basically. In reality, you don't even get 6.8KBps continously, not even 56000Kbps connection, but instead you get like between 40000 and 54000. So it is more then 12Hours or so... still it sucks. WHy not go unlimited? Digiplus, Iprimus provide nice deals like under $30 unlimited time/downloads :)
Cheers

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Megabytes replacing online hours.

by jardinier In reply to Megabytes replacing onlin ...

Thanks for your answer. I have emailed you a reply as I could not access this page from the email I received from Techrepublic. I will leave the question open a bit longer, in the hope of getting the maximum information that I can.
Julian Hancock.

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Megabytes replacing online hours.

by jardinier In reply to Megabytes replacing onlin ...

Point value changed by question poster.

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Megabytes replacing online hours.

by jardinier In reply to Megabytes replacing onlin ...

Due to my inability to comprehend how Technical Q & A ratings work, I may have denied the two posters, who helped me greatly, of receiving their points. If this is so, my profuse apologies.

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Megabytes replacing online hours.

by jardinier In reply to Megabytes replacing onlin ...

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