Usage limits – why do they matter?

While comparing broadband deals and broadband providers you would probably have come across a factor called ‘usage limit’ (as well as its evil twin, ‘fair use policy’). But how does usage limits impact your broadband connection?

Every activity you do on the internet involves the transfer of data, measured in megabytes (MB) or gigabytes (1 GB = 1024 MB). This transfer of data costs your service provider a fee which they need to pay to wholesale providers. To limit their costs your broadband provider puts a limit on how much data you can transfer or ‘use’, especially if you choose a cheap monthly package which does not deliver much in the way of profit to your service provider.

A usage limit of say 3GB may or may not be enough depending on what you do with your connection. Checking email and accessing online banking is unlikely to get you even close to 3GB’s of usage. However downloading an audio track uses around 4MB, so 750 audio tracks downloaded would approach 4Gb. Watching a video on BBC iPlayer uses about 250MB every hour – 3GB will give you up to 10 hours, but no more.

In other words if you watch a lot of BBC iPlayer videos and download plenty of music tracks you should probably be looking at a usage cap of about 20GB or unlimited usage. One word of caution here: unlimited usage almost always come with a ‘fair use policy’ which either dictates a usage limit beyond which your use would be considered as ‘unfair’ or a broad statement about how your connection might be suspended if your usage is deemed as ‘unfair’.

To get a grip on how much you usage you need you may want to visit a broadband comparison site which often has an interactive calculator that can work out how much bandwidth you need. You should then compare broadband deals to see which broadband UK providers offer the usage package you need.