• How's Everyone Doing With Their Big Three Data Caps?

    by
    acurrie
    Published on 03-31-2020 01:00 PM
    7 Comments Comments


    Not flexing or anything here, just providing a data point with my own usage for my last billing period with Telus.

    The good news? It would seem that 20GB of monthly mobile data is indeed enough for my needs. This includes all app updates, uploads to Google Photos, about a gigabyte of podcast downloads and, my guilty pleasure—and also far and away my biggest consumption of data—a nightly before-bed update of the latest GIFs and memes from Imgur.

    The bad news? I rarely if ever consume video on my phone; for that I have an Android TV box hooked up to my home Internet. So if I had to rely on my mobile carrier for everything, 20 gigs per month likely wouldn't cut it.

    How about you? Is your monthly data allotment enough to get by on? And if you blow past it are your throttled data speeds sufficient?

    ---------
    Andrew Currie has been blogging about mobile phones since 2001, smartphones (depending on how you define them) since 2002 and smartwatches since 2014.
    ---------
    This article was originally published in forum thread: How's Everyone Doing With Their Big Three Data Caps? started by acurrie View original post
    1. Categories:
    2. Carriers
    Comments 7 Comments
    1. turbogeek's Avatar
      turbogeek - 03-31-2020, 10:53 AM
      I've only gone over my 10GB limit once - I forgot to turn off wi-fi tethering when I got home, then very uncharacteristically, I plugged my phone into my computer to charge. PC proceeded to switch from Wi-Fi to this new 'wired' connection as I watched something on Netflix. I was in San Diego a few days later, and ended up hitting my cap and having to spring for a top-up to access maps and messaging to coordinate plans and navigate.
    1. @Class's Avatar
      @Class - 03-31-2020, 12:52 PM
      Doing well here. 2.22 GB out of 20 GB used, 10 days to go. The annoying thing with Bell / Telus is they cut off your mobile hotspot when you reach the cap on their '10/20/50 GB + dialup' plans. So even at 64 KB/s you could do some basic tasks...

      With Rogers they don't cut off the hotspot.
    1. The_Night_Owl's Avatar
      The_Night_Owl - 03-31-2020, 10:10 PM
      Meanwhile on my AT&T plan:

      Code:
      10GB of Data Added to Your Account

AT&T is here to help you stay connected during this difficult time.  To help, we temporarily added 10GB of data to your plan per month for 60 days. This data can be used by your smartphone or as a mobile hotspot for capable devices. For more info on how AT&T is supporting our customers, go to https://about.att.com/pages/COVID-19.html.
    1. beer_wisdom's Avatar
      beer_wisdom - 04-02-2020, 08:41 PM
      Can someone share experiences with the speeds after you go over the limit?
      Can you watch videos or stream radio?
      Make voice and videocalls over Viber and WhatsApp?


      Sent from my iPhone using HoFo
    1. acurrie's Avatar
      acurrie - 04-03-2020, 06:49 AM
      Quote Originally Posted by beer_wisdom View Post
      Can someone share experiences with the speeds after you go over the limit?
      Howard posted this last summer: How fast is unlimited?
    1. SmokeJV's Avatar
      SmokeJV - 04-03-2020, 06:46 PM
      Quote Originally Posted by beer_wisdom View Post
      Can someone share experiences with the speeds after you go over the limit?
      Can you watch videos or stream radio?
      Make voice and videocalls over Viber and WhatsApp?


      Sent from my iPhone using HoFo
      Last cycle I purposely went over to see how it was. It was not horrible but painful. Facetime worked fine, YouTube was fine at 360p, 480p has to buffer for a bit. I watch Twitch a lot and that was rough as sometimes streams would error while loading a few times. When it eventually loaded it was only stable at 160p.
      Apple Music was fine, just too a few seconds to load the next song streaming. Sometimes the cover art wouldn't load right away but the audio was fine.
      The biggest thing was just while waiting for something I usually load Twitter and scrool through, but with the slow speeds depending on the time I was waiting, it wasn't worth it as by the time the tweets loaded what I was waiting for was ready.
      So I wouldn't go over on purpose anymore, but at least I know how to change my usage if I do.
    1. Steven Hurdle's Avatar
      Steven Hurdle - 11-15-2020, 04:12 PM
      I don't think I've ever run out of data, no matter what my data bucket was. Not when it was 6 GB per month, and not now that I have 25 GB per month of full-speed data (and unlimited 2G-speed). The most I typically use in a month, even when using data absolutely indiscriminately, is about 2 GB per month. I live and work in Gigabit WiFi that I control (I own a small business), and when I'm out-and-about I'm usually doing something other than using my phone. The odds of my mobile data use ever increasingly significantly is very low.

      If I could save a substantial amount of money by having less data, I'd do it. But data buckets keep getting both bigger and cheaper, so c'est la vie.

  • Sponsored By

  • Facebook

    HowardForums Official Fan Page

  • Recent Reviews