How much data does a 32KB stream use per hour ?

I was asked “how much data does a 32KB audio stream use per hour?”

This information will be of use to people with mobile phones and ADSL broadband.  Mobile phone and some ADSL broadband users have limited download limits per month.  For example a low end broadband package might have 2Gb of download allowance per month, a mobile phone may only have 500Mb download per month.

If you listen to streaming audio from your mobile phone, PC or internet radio this will tell you how much data you use per hour.  As you can see the lower the stream quality the less data it uses.  Also if the stream is in Mono it will be less than shown below, this assumes Stereo as most broadcasts will be in Stereo.

So your mobile phone, internet radio or PC will say something like “32Kbps – BBC World Service” this means you are listen to a 32Kbps stream of the BBC World Service.  The chart below will show how much each stream will use per hour.

32Kbps is 4KBs that’s about 14MB per hour

64Kbps is 8KBs that’s about 29MB per hour