Gallery

Gamers & heavy downloaders

Posted on 11 Feb 2009 at 10:30

Downloads & streaming

Six months ago, when we first reviewed mobile broadband services, 10GB was the biggest monthly data cap on the market - and that would cost you the grandiose sum of £35 a month on a two-year contract. Today, you can get 15GB for £30 per month on an 18-month contract with 3, and there's no doubt prices will continue to tumble as competition hots up.

Even relatively heavy downloaders would do well to eat their way through 15GB per month. With 15GB you could download 20 hour-long shows from the BBC iPlayer (about 450MB each), 200 MP3 tracks (around 5MB each), and a couple of heavyweight software applications such as Photoshop CS4 Extended (855MB) and still have more than half of your monthly allowance left to spare.

Streaming audio and video is also well within the capabilities of mobile broadband in areas with good 3G reception. Even the "high-quality" streams on the BBC iPlayer are ready to play after a couple of seconds of caching.

Nonetheless, it's simply impossible to argue that download fiends wouldn't be better off with a standard ADSL or cable connection. Not only is it usually faster, but you get far more data for your money. O2, for example, offers "unlimited downloads" on even its most basic ADSL packages, which cost as little as £7.50 per month.

Best broadband deal: Be Broadband - which did well in the 2008 PC Pro Broadband ISP survey - offers high-speed ADSL2+ connections that gamers and downloaders will benefit from, with speeds of up to 24Mbits/sec and unlimited downloads for £18 per month. Virgin Media's cable network is also worth considering.

Next: Students

Broadband: Fixed vs broadband

Author: Barry Collins