3 ways to make your off-peak allowance work harder
Peak data on Sky Muster™ is a precious commodity. Making the most of your data allowance is important, but isn’t always easy. I’ve done the research and came up with 3 ways to utilize your off-peak data.
Let’s quickly talk about what your Off-peak data is and when it can be used. Off-peak data is extra data that can be used between 1AM – 7AM in your local time zone.
You may ask, “why is there is so much off-peak data compared to peak data?” That’s a great question and there are a few reasons why.
- The nbn™ Sky Muster™ fair use policy limits customers to 150GB of peak data in a rolling 4 week period, but it also says that SkyMesh are able to offer a total of 300GB of data to you in that period. This allows us to have higher off-peak data included with all our standard plans.
- There are fewer customers that are using the network during off-peak hours, which means there is more bandwidth available to use, so we offer extra off-peak data so all that free space isn’t going to waste.
1: Download Managers
A download manager is a piece of software that can schedule large downloads like movies and software updates in your off-peak data. Download Managers work by saving a link to the file you want to download then scheduling for your off-peak data times. When the time comes, the download manager starts downloading your file for you.
We recommend these Download Managers:
- Free Download Manager (Mac and Windows)
- Ninja Download Manager (support youtube downloads)
- Firefox addon (not support on all versions of FireFox)
2: Updates
Updates are a sure-fire way to eat into your usage allowance but are necessary to ensure your computer or mobile device is secure and running smoothly. The most popular operating systems will allow you to schedule updates for a later time. You can configure your devices to change the way they handle updates.
Popular operating systems:
3: Cloud-based applications
It seems like everything is on the “cloud”. When we talk about the cloud it refers to sharing resources, software, and information over a network, in this case, the Internet. If you are using Dropbox or something similar, you can sync your files during off-peak hours.
Selecting the right plan
When it comes to choosing a plan, there are two key areas to focus on: Speed and data.
Speed
- nbn™ 12 (upto 12/1 Mbps) perfect for everyday browsing and emails.
- nbn™ 25 (upto 25/5 Mbps) fast broadband perfect for browsing and streaming online videos.
Data
The amount of data you will need depends on how you use the internet, and the number of people that use your service.
Not sure how much data you need? I have a created a quick list to help us estimate:
- Web Browsing = 2 MB per page.
- Email = 50 kB per textual email.
- Music = 144 MB per hour.
- Movies = 4 GB per HD movie.
- Music Streaming = 100 MB per hour of HD content.
For solid advice on which plan is right for you, I recommend chatting with our Sales team or come see me on facebook. We are happy to help!
Don’t forget, all of our Sky Muster™ plans offer unlimited plan changes so you can always adjust your speed and data.
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