Online Radio Costs?

[stirly]

Hi!

Quick question. I have a normal tarrif, where I get free texts and 600 mins free talk time. I am interested to know how much it would cost me to listen to Radio Five Live online per hour? The N95 only has an FM radio, hence the requirement to revert to the online version.

Thanks.

[zxon]

Long Answer: Depends who you're with and the quality of the Radio Five Live feed, but it would be very expensive.

Lemmie use O2 as an example. Typically if you don't have any free data on your tarriff (or none left) then they charge £3 per 1Mb downloaded. Now let's say, for argument's sake that the Radio Five Live stream is 64kbps (kilobits per second).

There are 1,024 Kilobytes in a megabyte, so we need to convert the kilobits to kilobytes by dividing it by eight:

64 kilobits / 8 = 8 kilobytes

So assuming there's no buffering problems, you're downloading 8 kilobytes per second on your phone all the time. Now to work out the cost over the space of an hour:

8 kilobytes per second
8 * 60 = 480 kilobytes per minute
480 * 60 = 28,800 Kilobytes per hour

Remembering that there're 1,024 kilobytes in a megabyte...

28,800 / 1,024 = 28.125 Megabytes

Multiply by the cost per MB:

28.125 * 3 = 84.375

So, to listen to Radio Five Live over GPRS for an hour could cost £84.38 if you're with o2.

Short Answer: Use WLAN instead.

[EDIT] Sorry for the long post, but some people might ask why it costs so much.

[stirly]

Fantastic and informed answer. Many thanks. Will invest in a radio with MW instead of the slightly prohibitive £85 per hour option!

Thanks again!

[clive1]

woah i knew it was going to be high but £84

[zxon]

Originally Posted by stirly

Fantastic and informed answer. Many thanks. Will invest in a radio with MW instead of the slightly prohibitive £85 per hour option!

Thanks again!

No problem.

Another titbit is if you're with T-Mobile and your package is the Web'n'Walk one (Which many N95 owners have taken advantage of), you would reach the end of your 1Gb monthly limit after 36 hours of constant listening of the station.

If you have Web'n'Walk Plus instead, you could enjoy it for over 4 1/2 days

This is, of course, assuming that the above information is accurate and that T-Mobile do actually take action against those who abuse their fair usage policy.

[Halon]

The 'fair use' policy matter is an interesting point. I'd always imagined it was meant to prohibit people from, for example, running peer-to-peer sharing programs 24/7 and so treating the network as their own little LAN.

But, could legitimately listening to the radio be considered not to be fair use? It'd be interesting to see the result of a test case regarding this.

[zxon]

It would, yeah. As far as I know a fair use policy usually means "Don't download more than what we say". T-Mobile's Web'n'Walk has a 1Gb/month limit, but the plus one has 3Gb/month. Provided that these haven't been exceeded, I wouldn't think they would have a problem.

[Obskure]

Originally Posted by zxon;355976

[i

8 kilobytes per second
8 * 60 = 480 kilobytes per minute
480 * 60 = 28,800 Kilobytes per hour[/i]

Remembering that there're 1,024 kilobytes in a megabyte...

28,800 / 1,024 = 28.125 Megabytes

Multiply by the cost per MB:

28.125 * 3 = 84.375

So, to listen to Radio Five Live over GPRS for an hour could cost £84.38 if you're with o2.

Hi. Saw this post and had to register just to post o2 irelands' rip off pricing structure!
Using the same model as posted above, payg mobile internet costs 1cent per kilobyte
i.e 28,800*.01=€288
Alternatively, there are two subscription levels for bill-pay customers: €10 for 10 MB or €20 for 25MB. both plans charge a €1 per MB thereafter!
So the Internet radio could cost between €24 on the €20 plan or
€29 on the €10 plan or
€288 pay-as-you-go!!

[3Shirts]

Just to add to the T-Mobile web n walk discussion. I have this (the 'base' package) and I use my connection as if it is unlimited. That is to say that I download podcasts (3 weekly ones about 30mb each and a video one thats at least 50mb a week), browse the web, listen to internet radio and upload photos etc A LOT. Now I can't be completely sure how much I use but I have decided that, as of Jan, I am going to reset my timers evey month so I can see for certain but I am sure there have been months where I've exceeded a gig by quite a margin and nothing has happened.