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Is it even possible to last a month on 250MB?

Z

zorahk

macrumors 6502
Original poster
I checked my iPhone usage for the past month:

500MB.

I use 2.7GB a year.

I hardly ever stream videos on my phone, just web, email, app store, and itunes store.

So uh, are att and apple just kidding or what?
 
Of course. If you use it three or four times a month during those rare occasions when you're not on wifi, it's probably enough. If you use it often to receive your email and wait till you're in a wifi network to do anything that requires much bandwdth it's probably enough.
 
I haven't gone over 250MB on my iPhone in six months. I've been watching. November was the last time and I went over by about 30MB.

I have yet to turn on 3G for my iPad yet since I've been at home all weekend but when I do I plan to try the 250MB plan first. There's no harm nor foul in doing so since upgrading to the Unlimited plan restarts the 30 day counter, after the original 250MB are used up.
 
I'm on a 250MB per month plan for my iPhone and haven't come close to reaching the limit yet. I mostly use WiFi and when I do use the 3G it's just to check a couple of emails or do a tiny bit of browsing once every couple of weeks.
 
I'm not sure if it's enough, but I figure as long as it gets me through more than half a month, it's worth it.
 
Hope to post next week my experiences with the iPad 3G. Got mine on Friday - but a heavy work load this weekend decided to wait till tomorrow to get it set up and start using the 3G model after I return the wifi one in the morning.

I decided to take the hit and go with the 3G after some frustration at work in not having wifi 🙁 I am thinking that 250MB will be enough for most things.... don't plan on streaming video and such while in my home area. Just web sites, emails, weather and news checks.

As I mentioned in another thread, I can see me looking at things differently on travel, and needing to look at doing the $30 plan for when I am stuck at a crappy hotel that wants to gouge me for $10 a day for wifi! 😡

But then I did tend to load up my iPhone with videos for my road trips. Even more so with my 64GB iPad 3G now on those occasions. Really am thinking that the $15 will work long term. And if I really need wifi download speeds I figure on travel I can always hit a cafe with free wifi, or any of the 20,000 ATT hotspots.
 
pondie84 said:
I'm on a 250MB per month plan for my iPhone and haven't come close to reaching the limit yet. I mostly use WiFi and when I do use the 3G it's just to check a couple of emails or do a tiny bit of browsing once every couple of weeks.
Click to expand...

Thought that the data plan for the iPhone was unlimited?
 
ashVID said:
Remember that the $15 also includes UNLIMITED use of all AT&T wifi locations. That's pretty much every McD's and Starbucks in the nation. Check out the coverage map here:

http://www.att.com/gen/general?pid=13540

ash =o)
Click to expand...

Like I said 😱

Thanks for the link to back it up... was to lazy here to search and post it LOL That is one of the reasons I decided to go 3G here.

Though do you know if it is only "basic" wifi spots, or does it include the "premiere" wifi spots as well?
 
zorahk said:
I checked my iPhone usage for the past month:

500MB.

I use 2.7GB a year.

I hardly ever stream videos on my phone, just web, email, app store, and itunes store.

So uh, are att and apple just kidding or what?
Click to expand...

If you are using 2.7 GB per year, then you exceeded your 'average' by about double this month.

2.7 GB / year would be about 225 MB per month. 250 MB/month is 3.0 GB in a year. So if you know your usage pattern is 2.7 GB/year, then 250 MB might work for you.

But I think the 250 MB plan is targeting people who plan to use the 3G connection almost exclusively for email. Much more than straight email is likely to push anyone over the limit once you toss in web browsing and any social media.

On the other hand, they seem to be blocking apps ability to stream media content - which limits what's left to chew up the data plan.
 
raremage said:
If you are using 2.7 GB per year, then you exceeded your 'average' by about double this month.

2.7 GB / year would be about 225 MB per month. 250 MB/month is 3.0 GB in a year. So if you know your usage pattern is 2.7 GB/year, then 250 MB might work for you.

But I think the 250 MB plan is targeting people who plan to use the 3G connection almost exclusively for email. Much more than straight email is likely to push anyone over the limit once you toss in web browsing and any social media.

On the other hand, they seem to be blocking apps ability to stream media content - which limits what's left to chew up the data plan.
Click to expand...

The only one I have noticed so far was ABC. Netflix works great!
 
I probably could get buy because there is pretty good Wifi around, but the 3G often ends up more convenient for me. Already hit 275MB after one day.
 
ashVID said:
Remember that the $15 also includes UNLIMITED use of all AT&T wifi locations. That's pretty much every McD's and Starbucks in the nation. Check out the coverage map here:

http://www.att.com/gen/general?pid=13540

ash =o)
Click to expand...
Have we ever heard or has anyone tried (in the three days we've had.. 🙂 ) to see how the 'free WiFi' works? Is it supposed to be 'magic' or do you use your login from the 3G account setup (that doesn't work at att.com/ipad...), or what?
 
i went with the 250 mb plan after looking at my 3gs and seeing 3.8gb used since 6/20. Thought the number looked a bit weird but figured i'd give the 250 a try. Since the ipad probably wouldn't see all my internet use with the 3gs too.


I used 50 mb in a day basically just forum browsing and reading news......
 
I did a 20 minute test this morning. Checked email, posted a couple of replies in Facebook (safari) and downloaded a 900kb PDF, which skews the result slightly.

I was going to post the screenshots from my saved photos on the iPad, but apparently I can't. So 3G usage went from...

29.4mb to 35.8mb received
3.3mb to 4.0 mb sent

Subtract 1mb for the PDF and I used about 5 MBs in 20 minutes.
 
On my iPhone I have used 200 mb in the last two months over cellular network. I think if you have wifi at home it is easy to stay within the limit. The only time that I would worry about the limit was if I was going to be away from home for more that 3 days.
 
It's the AT&T business model.

500mb would be so much more usable for $15, leaving only video streamers and other high demand users for the $30/mo unlimited plan.

AT&T does the same with their text messaging plans. $5 for 200 text messages, but someone who sends/receives a reasonable 300-500 messages must pay triple the base price at $15/mo for 1500 text messages...

I suppose the partial $15/mo data plan for the ipad is better than nothing.
 
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