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1.2 GB in two days?

mikelegacy

mikelegacy

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Dec 5, 2010
1,138
0
Pittsburgh, PA
My data plan restarted on Christmas day, that's two days ago, and apparently i've used 1.2 GB of cell data on my iPad in that time span. The only major thing I've done is watch a TV show on ABC player and one episode of Family Guy on Netflix. Oh ya, I also streamed a live sporting event for probably an hour and a half. I download an app that was 282MB but that was obviously on WIFI. I've never used more than 1.6GB on my iPhone and I don't know what my iPad usage is like. I think im getting screwed. What do you think?
 
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mikelegacy said:
My data plan restarted on Christmas day, that's two days ago, and apparently i've used 1.2 GB of cell data on my iPad in that time span. The only major thing I've done is watch a TV show on ABC player and one episode of Family Guy on Netflix. Oh ya, I also streamed a live sporting event for probably an hour and a half. I download an app that was 282MB but that was obviously on WIFI. I've never used more than 1.6GB on my iPhone and I don't know what my iPad usage is like. I think im getting screwed. What do you think?
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I have no idea much bandwidth those videos require but that can be a lot of data.
 
Seriously? You watched all that and you're surprised you've used up 1.2 GB?

You do know that those movies typically, give or take, consume 700 kilobits per second. So for a 45-minute show, it'll be roughly 230 MB.

It all adds up.
 
1.2 GB sounds about right. First of all, I think my Americans have an extremely poor idea of how much bandwidth they consume (whether it's cable/verizon fios or now cellular data).

Many foreign countries have started restricting their cellular data so there no true "unlimited data"

So it's really up to the cell phone companies/cable broadband companies to educate Americans how much data they really consume especially with streaming video/music.

But these US companies have always advertised "unlimited data" to their consumers so they feel they would be at a competitive disadvantage by forcing "limited data" to their consumers.

I am a techy and know how much data I consume each month whether it's my wired broadband or my cellular broadband.

Just with 1 hour on slingbox, I can eat through about 200-400 MB of cellular data depending on my quality of video. Can you imagine if you were to stream 2-3 hours of video each day. You can easily run through 20-30GB of data each month.

So on one hand it's up to the consumers to be educated on data consumption but ultimately it's up to the companies that sell data plans to educate consumers. However, these companies are now facing their own worst nightmare by originally advertising unlimited data and now trying to backtrack and force limited data down people's throats.
 
mikelegacy said:
My data plan restarted on Christmas day, that's two days ago, and apparently i've used 1.2 GB of cell data on my iPad in that time span. The only major thing I've done is watch a TV show on ABC player and one episode of Family Guy on Netflix. Oh ya, I also streamed a live sporting event for probably an hour and a half. I download an app that was 282MB but that was obviously on WIFI. I've never used more than 1.6GB on my iPhone and I don't know what my iPad usage is like. I think im getting screwed. What do you think?
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Two TV episodes, and one 90 minute sporting event and all they got you for was 1.2 GB.

I think you got a deal.

Consider the size of a show on iTunes in standard resolution is about 500 MB for 42 minutes.

You probably should buy a small TV and get On Demand cable.
 
mikelegacy said:
My point is that I did all of those thing on my iphone as well and never went over 1.6 for an entire month.....
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I don't know how that is possible then. I use about 2 hours of Netflix on my iPhone 4 and that puts me at just over 1GB.
 
mikelegacy said:
My point is that I did all of those thing on my iphone as well and never went over 1.6 for an entire month.....
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I agree with poster above me. You're probably under the wrong impression there. 1.2 GB sounds right for the amount of videos you have watched. It really does suck to be limited to 2GB plan from (T). I'm sure they would have been better off financially offering the unlimited.
 
mikelegacy said:
My point is that I did all of those thing on my iphone as well and never went over 1.6 for an entire month.....
Click to expand...

You may want to check the apps you're using but I know some media apps deliver higher quality streams to the iPad to take advantage of the larger screen (or they deliver lower quality to the iPhone, whichever way round you like). Think of it this way, on iPad you're streaming the same content as you would to your TV, on the iPhone you're streaming mobile content.

saberahul said:
I agree with poster above me. You're probably under the wrong impression there. 1.2 GB sounds right for the amount of videos you have watched. It really does suck to be limited to 2GB plan from (T). I'm sure they would have been better off financially offering the unlimited.
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Umm, actually I'd say this is a prime example of WHY they limited data plans. Considering that this was fairly low useage and it consumed 1.2Gb over 2 days it's easy to imagine that in a standard month on an unlimited plan normal users would regularly rack of 10 to 20Gb of data. That's a LOT of bandwidth especially for mobile networks.
 
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I am in the middle with a battle with my network provider about a similar issue.

Are you getting your data usage stats from your iPad or from your Network provider?

I am finding there are huge difference between what my provider is saying I am using on my iPhone (yes a different device from you but...) and what the actual iPhone's data usage stats are telling me.
 
mikelegacy said:
My data plan restarted on Christmas day, that's two days ago, and apparently i've used 1.2 GB of cell data on my iPad in that time span. The only major thing I've done is watch a TV show on ABC player and one episode of Family Guy on Netflix. Oh ya, I also streamed a live sporting event for probably an hour and a half. I download an app that was 282MB but that was obviously on WIFI. I've never used more than 1.6GB on my iPhone and I don't know what my iPad usage is like. I think im getting screwed. What do you think?
Click to expand...

Go to the iTunes store and have a look at how big the movies there are. And count yourself lucky that you didn't go an a foreign holiday where you suddenly pay dollars per megabyte of data in roaming charges.
 
mikelegacy said:
My data plan restarted on Christmas day, that's two days ago, and apparently i've used 1.2 GB of cell data on my iPad in that time span. The only major thing I've done is watch a TV show on ABC player and one episode of Family Guy on Netflix. Oh ya, I also streamed a live sporting event for probably an hour and a half. I download an app that was 282MB but that was obviously on WIFI. I've never used more than 1.6GB on my iPhone and I don't know what my iPad usage is like. I think im getting screwed. What do you think?
Click to expand...

Well that listing on your settings page doesnt reset to 0 when your data plan does, it keeps ticking up unless you manually reset it yourself, So if you're looking at it from your settings page, thats not what you've used since christmas day.
 
Benjy91 said:
Well that listing on your settings page doesnt reset to 0 when your data plan does, it keeps ticking up unless you manually reset it yourself, So if you're looking at it from your settings page, thats not what you've used since christmas day.
Click to expand...

While we are on that subject is there an app or maybe even a jailbreak app that keeps better tabs on data usage? I routinely forget to reset mine and it always makes me mad that I forget to do it.
 
azstinger said:
While we are on that subject is there an app or maybe even a jailbreak app that keeps better tabs on data usage? I routinely forget to reset mine and it always makes me mad that I forget to do it.
Click to expand...

Not sure, havent had a Jailbroken phone since 2008.
 
azstinger said:
While we are on that subject is there an app or maybe even a jailbreak app that keeps better tabs on data usage? I routinely forget to reset mine and it always makes me mad that I forget to do it.
Click to expand...

Use the official AT&T MyWireless app to track your usage, pay your bills, get billing notifications, and so on. It's a must for any American iPhone owner.

For the iPad, I have no idea.
 
Sounds about right with AT&T

Use your iPad/iPhone all you want....except do it on something NOT our network....because we only want you to use 2gb which is roughly the amount of crap in todays video world

2gb....what a joke....criminally low, imo
 
DiamondMac said:
Sounds about right with AT&T

Use your iPad/iPhone all you want....except do it on something NOT our network....because we only want you to use 2gb which is roughly the amount of crap in todays video world

2gb....what a joke....criminally low, imo
Click to expand...

I 100% completely agree. AT$T knows what the average consumer users. If they were really consumer friendly, they would make a 1GB/$15 option. There's a reason they created the very limited $15/250MB ipad option $15/200MB iphone option. They keep internal stats and the majority of users (at least on the iphone use between 200-500MB of data each month).

So they make a plan so restrictive (the 200MB iphone/250MB/$15 data plans), most users who opt for these consume less than 100MB.

It's like their $5/200 text plans. The majority of consumers send between 400-800 text a month. But there's no 1000 text option. It jumps from $5/200 text to 1500/$15 text option.

If ATT were consumer friendly they would make a 1GB/$15 data plan and than $20/2GB data plan and the $30/5GB data plan. But that would make too much sense.
 
aneftp said:
I 100% completely agree. AT$T knows what the average consumer users. If they were really consumer friendly, they would make a 1GB/$15 option. There's a reason they created the very limited $15/250MB ipad option $15/200MB iphone option. They keep internal stats and the majority of users (at least on the iphone use between 200-500MB of data each month).

So they make a plan so restrictive (the 200MB iphone/250MB/$15 data plans), most users who opt for these consume less than 100MB.

It's like their $5/200 text plans. The majority of consumers send between 400-800 text a month. But there's no 1000 text option. It jumps from $5/200 text to 1500/$15 text option.

If ATT were consumer friendly they would make a 1GB/$15 data plan and than $20/2GB data plan and the $30/5GB data plan. But that would make too much sense.
Click to expand...
If they want a cap to stop people from abusing the network (not even sure what "abusing" is but I assume it is someone using it 24/7 for use which sees an ABSURD amount of data), I get it.

But the 2gb cap has NOTHING to do with that and EVERYTHING to do with catching enough people into hitting it and thus starting their pay periods earlier

AT&T wanting to stop abusers would be a much higher cap but one that honest users would not catch to.

I read news, stream a LITTLE music, etc....and I get near the 2gb cap monthly.....For some reason I am shocked at how I get near it every month.

The fact that a normal user like me gets near it monthly should scare other users out there who are using video and other internet activities because AT&T will continue pushing for people to use their network AND pushing for the 2gb to stay
 
All that data usage seems to be accurate for 1.2 GB. I don't know why you sound surprised, OP.
 
Stealthipad said:
Sorry but I think you are mistaken
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Don't tell me im mistaken. Tell AT&T. It's THEIR WEBSITE AND CUSTOMER SERVICE that tells me the most i've ever used is 1.6GB. I was streaming with Justin.tv on my iPhone, maybe it uses a lot lower KB/s' than the website i was using on my iPad (veetle).

Who knows. I'm annoyed that there is no unlimited plan. What kind of douchey provider takes that away. It's just bad business. I think that was the final straw for AT&T. They has bad service, but they were the only provider with TRUE UNLIMITED. Now they took that away from us. Soon our cable internet providers are going to start capping us....
 
vincenz said:
All that data usage seems to be accurate for 1.2 GB. I don't know why you sound surprised, OP.
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I just don't get why the data usage doesn't correspond between devices. I used to watched over 10 hours (at least) of streaming live sports on my iPhone a month and I never used over 1.6GB. That's why im surprised.
 
mikelegacy said:
I just don't get why the data usage doesn't correspond between devices. I used to watched over 10 hours (at least) of streaming live sports on my iPhone a month and I never used over 1.6GB. That's why im surprised.
Click to expand...

Let's say you're right and I'm not saying you're not. It could be that the iPad is using more data due to streaming in a higher resolution due to it's bigger size. I'm not sure about this so if i'm wrong be sure to point out but logically speaking, it makes sense that the iPhone may stream a 480P resolution video while the iPad may stream 720P. Since I do not own an iPhone, I'm not sure whether it is capable of streaming at 720P or not so once again, if my logic is wrong be sure to point out.
 
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