There are many different things that go into the composition of a broadband provider providing their service. These include the contract length, broadband speeds, monthly prices and whether or not they can offer you a bundle which takes in some of their other services such as telephone and satellite television.

Most of us will usually, when shopping around for cheaper broadband, merely set up our details into one of the now ubiquitous price comparison sites and select the highest speed for the cheapest price. However, a lot of people tend to ignore another, very important detail when choosing broadband and that is download allowance.

Plainly speaking, a download allowance is as exactly as it sounds; it is your allowance of downloads! What this means is that you have a set amount of data you can use from the internet every month, and these tend to be on a sliding scale depending on how much you have paid or the actual length of the contract.

Now, you might be wondering how this tends to work out. Well, there is software available that you can use to regulate your usage of the internet and so stay within limits.

Roughly speaking, when speaking of a broadband connection, you can expect to use 20Kb for text emails sent and received, 50Kb to view a website page, 3Mb for the download of a song, 3Mb for one video clip of around three minutes duration, and anything from 400Mb to view a film. These are not exact scientific figures, but can give you a general idea of what you may be using.

Now, a lot of internet providers, especially the larger ones, package their deals as "unlimited broadband." This too is self-explanatory, as it means that there are no allowances on your connection and you can, in theory, use it as much as you would like. However, you must be aware of the small print regarding these arrangements.

Unlimited broadband is still subject to what is called a fair usage policy, in that it stops a user monopolising the bandwidth of a provider so that is slows their service down. This means that people who use the connection heavily, such as online gamers and those who download a lot of films and music, could see themselves being warned by letter to reduce their consumption or face their speed being capped or their connection broken altogether.

Also, some ISPs levy large costs on people who do overuse their broadband service, so be very careful when choosing your provider if you, for example, stream films or play online games either via your games console or computer.

Finally, it pays to mention download allowances on mobile broadband, which are usually far lower than most other services. This is mainly done as mobile broadband is relatively fledgling technology and is still not up to a high speed all over the country.

In all, it pays to take a look at the small print when you are taking out a contract with a broadband provider to ensure you don't fall foul to download allowances or fair usage policies and get the level of broadband cover that is right for you.