some ball-park data usage figures please

[Attonine]

This has nothing to do with the iPhone, but I thought this forum the most likely source for an answer.

The most viable chance of me getting off of dial-up is by using a USB modem device which connects to the local 3G network. Obviously the service has download caps:

1GB-$26, 5GB-$52, Unlimited-$93 (US$ per month) (believe it or not but I am currently spending more than the unlimited tariff on my dial-up, usually staring at a blank screen)

Like most people I have no idea what 1GB internet download usage actually means in real life.

What can you actually do with 1GB per month on a computer (not mobile phone)?

 

[infosprt]

I use my iPhone on the Internet for around 2 hours each day. My total amount of data used for last month was
228,552 KB. If my math serves me that is 228MB. I don't browse many large websites though mostly mobile ones. This number seems small compared to your lowest 1GB allocation. One big gotcha though is that the majority of my time is spent using WiFi which does not count in the total.

So I guess my number is useful if one is interested in seeing how much EDGE data is used.

For usage on a computer not a real mobile phone my guess is that 1GB is not very much. Probably on the order of browsing 30 minutes a day and not watching any high bandwidth things like YouTube.

I would be interested in what others are seeing as well.

 

[blaster_boy]

1 Gigabyte is nothing. Just surfing a few hours on some graphic-intensive websites will easely consume a few megabytes, and if you surf, you need an antivirus, and if you have an antivirus, you regularly need antivirus updates. Plus any desktop OS patches and updates, and your 1 gig will be consumed very quickly.

5 gig : hmmm. May be doable, if you are frugal. You could perhaps try that and if you notice that you are still going over the limit, upgrading to the unlimited.

It depends on what you do when on the internet, of course.

I'm curious, why can't you get adsl ?

 

[Attonine]

I can't get DSL because I live in an apartment block which does not have direct lines. The building has six lines which go into reception, which then passes the call onto the apartment, the kind of set-up you get in a hotel.

We have looked into getting one DSL line and passing it throughout the building wirelessly. However, the maximum bandwidth available is 1Mb/s, not sufficient to serve 25 apartments, especially as experience shows, if something can be abused here, it will be (i.e an individual user downloading uncompressed MPEG 2 movies day in day out - yes, illegally.) Billing also becomes a problem with individuals opting in and out of the system, plus one user needs to be responsible for the contract, collecting money from other users, and for administration. Plus the university I work for and the owner of the building have to agree to let us do this which involves the impossible task of getting them to understand what we want to do, and then getting it done, which has already taken 6 months with no sign of action (in fact the Dean is ignoring any communication relating to internet).


The solution, do everything individually-3G USB modem!


I'm particularly interested in finding out what kind of data usage services such as Skype involve.

 

[emotion]

and if you surf, you need an antivirus, and if you have an antivirus, you regularly need antivirus updates.

Antivirus? What's that?

 

[blaster_boy]

Okay, okay, lots of mac people don't use an antivirus, but I live in a dual world with windows and mac, and I exchange lots of mails with windows people.

It's true that I haven't had to use it much, but since I'm a raving paranoid I use ClamXav to scan my mail and any attachments I get. Even if I can't readily be infected (and since I'm a raving paranoid, I believe it's only a matter of time before the mac gets more interest from the hackers) I can notify others if they are sending me crap.

As for skype, I always exit the program after I use it, and data consumption should not be enormous for quick calls. But YMMV.

Oh and I found this which describes skype data consumption, but for supernodes. Probably not exactly what you were looking for, but if I found this after a quick search, I'm pretty sure you can find some more data digging a bit deeper.