With an abundance of special offers available picking a broadband plan is hard enough. Add in the fact that 1. We’re now more internet-dependent than ever and 2. The emergence of streaming TV services has woken up the binge-watcher in all of us; figuring out exactly how much data you’re burning through each month is mind-boggling, to say the least.
So how can you make a better choice? Look at your internet habits. Some online activities are known to use hundreds of bytes, while other can require almost no data across the month.
Thankfully, more and more ISPs are currently offering unlimited plans. Especially since the NBN rollout is going according to plan. By now, nearly one in three Australians can connect to the speedy network. As a result, there’s been a surge in affordable offers from fresh NBN providers, so you’re basically spoilt for choice. If you’re an avid user, the choice is clear.
But if you don’t spend too much time online, investing in an unlimited plan can seem wasteful. We break it down for you below, so you’ll be better informed when choosing a broadband plan to cover all your needs.
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Downloading
Downloading can be a huge hit to any data cap, so carefully think about your downloading habits before picking a broadband provider. For instance, if you regularly rent movies or TV shows through services like iTunes or BigPond movies, the numbers quickly add up. A standard length movie on iTunes requires 4GB for a HD file and about 1.5GB for a SD copy. That’s a lot of data when your limit is only 20GB per month. If you’re on a modest data plan, always check the size of the file you’re considering before hitting download.
You’re OK
You’re stretching it
You will likely go over your limit
| 10 GB | 20 GB | 50 GB | 100 GB | 500 GB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Web surfing |  | | | | |
| Social media | | | | | |
| YouTube |  | | | | |
| Gaming | | | | | |
| Streaming TV |  | | | | |
| Downloading | | | | | |
General email and googling
Let’s say you’re not that internet-savvy and you only use the web for minimal stuff – like sending an email every now and then, doing some research for work, looking up recipe ideas, as long as you don’t go online to download or stream, you will only need a limited amount of data to get by – so a 20/50 GB data plan might just be enough to satisfy your surfing cravings. This is clearly not the case for everyone though. A report by Nielsen revealed that the average person spends the equivalent of almost an entire day online every week. Moreover, if your family also regularly goes online, you need to take into account their needs as well. And kids are known to spend a lot of time in front of the computer. 20GB for the entire family will likely be insufficient.
Additional tip: If you frequently make calls via Skype, you don’t need to worry about exceeding your data limit. A standard voice call on the popular messaging service only uses about 360KB per minute.
Checking social media
Social networks aren’t that data hungry, but you should still consider this if you’re an avid user. Photo: Shutterstock
Social media is all the rage nowadays, and the same study we mentioned above states that seven in ten Australians are active social media users. During a minute of casual Facebook browsing you can easily burn around 2MB of data. So if you’re an avid user who spends more than an hour per day chatting and looking at Facebook pics and videos, you can easily burn over 3GB of data just to indulge your Facebook habit. Moreover, if you upload a lot of photos, that can add up to quite a significant amount of usage. Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest all consume less data than the mighty Facebook. Not the same can be said about YouTube, which brings us to…
YouTube
Here are the rates at which different resolutions consume data:
360p = 5.625 MB/minute, 337.5 MB/hour
480p = 7.5 MB/minute, 450 MB/hour
720p = 18.75 MB/minute, 1,125 MB/hour
1080p = 33.75 MB/minute, 2,025 MB/hour
Sure, this is merely a drop in the ocean for someone on a big 1000GB plan, but if you pick a smaller one you would be amazed by how fast streaming YouTube videos can burn through you monthly data.
Watching hours of data on YouTube quickly burns through your monthly allowance. Photo: Shutterstock
Online gaming
Surprisingly, playing the games isn’t what uses up most of the data – they generally burn around 1-2 MB per minute, sometimes less. However, if you plan on downloading the game from an online store, things get trickier. Some game files can be larger than 50GB – if you’re on a modest broadband plan, you can easily wipe out your internet for the month with a single download.
Netflix, Stan, and other streaming services
Streaming TV services are similar to YouTube in how much data they use per minute. However, due to the fact that TV shows and movies are longer than your average YouTube video, you will end up using more data over the course of a month.
We already covered approximately how much data you need to stream content on Australia’s most popular subscription video on demand services, so we won’t get into it again. Here’s a quick cheat sheet:
Netflix uses 0.7GB/h for SD streaming and 3GB/h for HD streaming
Stan uses and 1.13GB/h for SD streaming 2.89GB/h for HD streaming
Foxtel Now uses 1.4GB/h for SD streaming and 3.2GB/h for HD streaming
It’s also important to note that these services will automatically choose the resolution of the stream based on the speed of your connection, so you have to manually adjust it if you’re looking to reduce the amount of data you spend while watching Mindhunter. Also, these services are unmetered on some providers, so that’s something worth inquiring about before choosing a broadband plan.
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