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Usage Information

How plan sizes are counted?

Your IPSTAR Broadband plan counts the amount of data transferred between your computer or other connected devices and the internet over a certain amount of time. The billing period is one month. So if you have a 10GB plan this is the total amount of data that can be transferred between your computer or other devices and the internet within the billing period. Data is measured in bytes, kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes. We sell our plans in megabytes and gigabytes.

What is a gigabyte (GB) of data?

A gigabyte (GB) is a measurement unit for computer data that is technically about 1,048,576 Kilobytes (KB) and around 1000MB…but in the real world, this equates to approximately:

  • 8 – 16 hours of Facebook viewing
  • 1.5 hours of video conferencing (SD)
  • Around 200 music tracks (5MB each)
  • Approximately 1000 images or photos (1MB each)
  • 1.4 standard definition movies (700MB per movie)
Activity typeMeasurement of estimated/approximate data used
Internet browsing/surfing1MB – 4MB per minute (hugely variable depending on the site)
Email received500KB per email (estimate includes attachments & spam)
Film as a download2GB per film (avi, mpeg, divx)
Games/movie trailers100MB each
Music tracks as a download5MB per song (4-5min duration)
Online gaming15MB per hour
Music streaming1MB – 2MB per minute
Photos/documents850KB per image
Facebook1MB – 2MB per minute
YouTube and video streaming2.5MB – 6MB per minute (SD 2.5MB/min – HD 6MB/min)

This estimation table is not intended to track usage, rather helps to provide a guide to help you pick the right plan. To check your actual usage for this month, please log in to your account.