would virgin let you try there 50meg BB for a month or do you need a 12 month contract?

I have about 1 or 2 TB of data I need to download and on my current ADSL connection it would take me around 4-6 months.
My brother lives in a cable area and currently has therre 10 meg service which is capped under fair usage etc - however 50 meg isnt so i could download around 250 gig a day and get the data I need in around a week or less. I dont want to have to sign up for 12 months as I dont think I would need to use it that long - do you think if I get my brother to ring Virign they would let him try it for a month or so for free or let him try it and pay for a month or so but not sign a 12 month contract?

Doubtful but worth a try I guess.

Yes the 10meg as you say is throttled. Through the night I can get 1-1.5meg per sec from the likes of torr or megaupload etc but exceed the limit through the day and it's throttled for 5 hours by 75%

Is the stuff you are downloading available at greater d/l speeds than 250ish kbps? If doubtful, then just d/l it on the 10meg virgin connection as you won't be throttled underneath this sort of speed for the usual d/l hosting culprits (even through the daytime)

the sites will allow the data to come down as fast as my connection will allow so want to take advantage of the 50 meg service.

I see. It's worth seeing if they'll do a trial then. Just get him to lay it on thick like he's serious about perhaps going onto a 50meg contract but would like a months trial to see if it suits his needs.

I take it there is no way you can physically get to the source of the data? Otherwise taking a 1 or 2TB external HDD might be the best solution.

theres currently some work at virgin going on called what you see is what you get, so throtling be be a thing of the past

PartyBoy


I take it there is no way you can physically get to the source of the data? Otherwise taking a 1 or 2TB external HDD might be the best solution.

its not an option but thanks anyway for the ideas and info in your posts.

doc


theres currently some work at virgin going on called what you see is what you get, so throtling be be a thing of the past

would be good if that does come out - any idea of what it may? At moment I can really only download in middle of night and on weekday mornings and early afternoons to get a okish speed (3-4 meg) any other time everything slows to a crawl.

Is there not a 'cooling off period' with most things like this?  IE, a few days to cancel the contract if you're not happy with it?

What about Posting him a External HDD he loading it on and Posting/Shipping it back ?