If you’re a Lifehacker reader, chances are you often reach the end of the month and curse the fact that you’ve chewed through your download limit. Statistically speaking, however, that makes you an exception to the rule. New data suggests the average Internet user Australian downloads less than 6GB a month.
According to research from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), in the December 2010 quarter a typical Internet subscriber using ADSL or cable accessed just 17.5GB — less than 6GB for each month. (Unsurprisingly, usage on mobile broadband is a lot lower, at just over 0.5GB each month, though 3.7 million Australians now have access to a mobile broadband service.)
Those figures remind us yet again providers can afford to offer high download limits on their services — the vast majority of people won’t go anywhere near the limits. Lifehacker has long maintained that anything less than 2GB is a bad idea because OS updates can chew all that data up, but it looks like 10GB a month would cover many Australian households. Would it cover yours?
Brett
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 8:31 AMGood to see I am not average!
Sarah
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 8:39 AMDefinitely wouldn’t cover my household! We were on 100G and regularly over used so now we’ve switched to unlimited and I love it.
Juha
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 8:54 AMWhat’s the average upload amount then?
Bernie
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 9:01 AMI live rural, so I need to use a 3G modem/router for the household. The max we can get is 12GB, and we break that limit every month. And I’m definitely dreading the Lion upgrade … What a dumb idea using only the Mac App Store; grumble, grumble …
TSH
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 10:04 AMI can definitely sympathise mate. I’m on a 3GB 3G cap and I have to take my data budget very seriously. Mobile broadband is super-convenient but I’m reconsidering my choice not to get ADSL2…
Hughhh
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 12:57 PMIf you guys can get Optus 3G, I strongly suggest that you switch to Internode for wireless broadband. I pay $40 for 9GB and can leave any time, as it’s a month-to-month contract.
http://www.internode.on.net/residential/wireless_broadband/nodemobile_data/
Johann
Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 9:45 AMMate, with only 3GB to play with you should have written that message in text speak to save bandwidth!
Ben
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 9:10 AMIf the average is in fact only 6GB / month, then this just shows how much the ISPs are ripping us off by making us have: a) Quotas, b) Peak/Offpeak times.
Try explaining our ISP system to someone in the USA and maybe mention the speeds too.
Bah.
Johann
Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 9:46 AMAs a British ex-pat I’d go further and say try mentioning it to anyone in Northern Europe too…
Sam
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 9:13 AMTo be honest, I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head what my household (with just my wife and I as regular users) averages. I do know that we regularly met or exceeded our 10+10GB peak/off-peak allowance, but since doubling that limit on a higher plan, we seldom come close to being shaped.
LG
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 9:19 AMI still haven’t seen any compelling evidence to substantiate what people are actually using 100gb a month on – surely it’s not all legit content?
phaded
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 9:36 AMI use about 150gb a month streaming starcraft 2.
HD video streaming is big!
Trjn
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 9:53 AMMost of my download usage (100gb peak/100gb off peak, the bulk of which gets used) is spent on getting TV shows that either don’t air here or are heavily delayed.
On top of that, live streams of Starcraft 2, Street Fighter and Marvel vs Capcom tournaments and heavy YouTube use (both uploading and downloading) will chew up whatever is left.
Basically, whatever download limit we have, we will use in my house.
Virus__
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 12:56 PMWith all these Steam sales i’m constantly downloading games. Like Saints Row 2 was 11Gb there’s one tenth of my quota. I also download my friends Steam games for them, since they’re on stupid data plans like 20GB (10 on & 10 off peak) kinda crap.
Peter Ortner
Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 10:12 AMI find the quota free Steam from my ISP to be very useful – for the frequent and sizable game updates, if nothing else.
[doa]
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 9:21 AMSounds about right.
For everyone I know that uses 50Gb+ per month I probably know a dozen others that would be lucky to go over 2Gb if it wasn’t for the constant Windows Updates.
Graham
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 9:24 AMWe generally use about 12-15GB per month in my household. I use it primarily for remote access to VPN and my better half runs a home business. We YouTube, audio stream etc. but we don’t torrent or leech.
Moke
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 9:24 AMI was on 100gb plan and going over constantly without even trying, now on unlimited. Most of my workmates don’t even have an Internet connection and they’re all under 30.
Paul
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 9:30 AMSwitched to unlimited, now I don’t need to even think about it, I used to have to plan out the months usage as to not go over the quota. I need to enjoy it while I can as I can as the NBN is just around the corner – super fast downloads with a super ridiculous price and guaranteed to have download limits once again.
While we are busy building one of the worlds best infrastructures, the rest of the world is enjoying cheap high speed download cap free internet the way it should be.
Stove
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 11:32 AMPersonally, I prefer if there’s a limit in writing. ‘Unlimited plans’ are rarely unlimited, and ISPs/Telcos have a history of changing their minds after the date.
If they set the limit to, say, the amount you can theoretically download in a month (24mb dsl line * 60 * 60 * 24 * 31 / 8 == a tad over 8tb), I’d be far more likely to go with them.
Of course, that probably means I’m just not their target market.
Powder
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 7:52 PMWhat’s with NBN hate? It will provide a super fast network Australia wide (creating the network effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect)
The cost of transferring data will plummet. Every time a network is updated, data limits increase and prices drop. It never goes up. You are 100% wrong.
Nathan
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 9:33 AMlol at “if you’re a lifehacker reader”
If you read this article, aren’t you a lifehacker reader?
Angus Kidman
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 9:35 AMProbably should have said “regular”. But then again, there’s no account to what happens with sharing and social networks.
Daniel
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 9:42 AMI download plenty of paid-for material online. Ever heard of Bandcamp? Best music selling site ever – choice of codec, tagged files (as in ID3), tagged artists, albums and tracks (as in tag-cloud tags)… So of course I always download lossless (FLAC) and that is naturally a lot of data.
Plus the fact that Windows updates always come from MS’s servers, so that each of the 5 Windows PCs in my house has to download the same data instead of doing the logical thing and sharing it (like Blizzard’s game updater since the World of Warcraft era).
Will
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 9:56 AMI have an unlimited data plan because the 500gb plan wasn’t enough.
I have 2gb on my phone plan, and I go through that every month, despite my phone spending most of its time on wifi.
In other words, I use more than 6gb on my phone alone, let alone my desktop. I downloaded about 10gb *yesterday*. And that was a slow day.
Tommy.....
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 10:01 AMwow…i’m super un-average….I average around 700GB p/m :/
One of the lucky ones with TPG unlimited on my exchange
Kerry
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 10:12 AM10GB is more than enough for two semi-retireds and I spend most of the day on the net. No gaming though.
f4ction
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 10:15 AMI easily go over my limit, I’m only on a 100GB cap but reach it within a week. Looking at upgrading my 30Mbps cable to 100Mbps@1TB as it seems like reasonable value.
My phone usually sits at about 100MB a month as I use my wifi when I’m home and get no reception elsewhere.
Damien
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 10:25 AMJust to clarify, it looks to me (with my very limited reading comprehension) that this is 6GB per month per average subscription, as opposed to per average person.
Which is even skinnier when you think of four+ member families sharing a subscription…
Anthony
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 10:39 AMI download 250-300GB a month (500GB limit), but on my phone only about 200mb a month (2GB limit)
Mcnugget
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 11:07 AMI have a 200gb plan, and i can often go over that,
Chris
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 11:28 AMInteresting, but not surprising. Facebook, email and the odd google search do not take up a huge amount of bandwidth so 6GB on average makes sense.
I suspect that once Netflix gets its act together (or I should say once the movie publishers allow them to) things will change quite rapidly.
In general I am at about 150gb a month as I toss virtual machines and large codebases back and forth to the US. Ah the joys of telecommuting.
Shaun
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 11:48 AMI max my 60GB limit every month, & I’m the primary user.
Only have 3.5GB left & it has to last me a week.
Chris
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 12:09 PM200GB a month for me, and I use ALL of it!
Glad to see I’m not average either :)
But if the ISP’s rolled back to their 1990′s plans, there’d be a revolution!
Luke
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 12:45 PMI use about 200Gb of metered content a month and about 100gig of unmetered content a month on Tbox streaming, game arena and linux Iso’s etc
Jeremy
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 1:53 PMThis is the first time I’ve used my download limit in ages, I usually use close to my 50gb/m by the very end. All those damn free ps3 games, 7 days of dialup speed left. D: