"Typical" Monthly Data Volumes?

[VideoFreek]

I am seriously considering getting an iPhone here in Germany, but I need advice on one thing. T-Mobile's iPhone plans come with "internet flatrate," or theoretically unlimited usage, but there is an important "gotcha" literally buried in the fine print. The gotcha is that after one exceeds a monthly volume of 300 MB (or 1GB or 5GB, depending on which plan one selects), they throttle the bandwidth back to 64k downstream/ 16k upstream for the rest of the month! This seriously detracts from the 3G experience, needless to say! I understand this is necessary for them to avoid kiddies signing up for the cheapest plan and then streaming YouTube 24x7, but the caps seem a bit stingy to me.

So, the question for those who've had their phone a while, what is "typical" usage? My profile is: middle-age professional whose internet use would be confined to email, maps, web surfing, etc. No heavy video or music streaming expected.

 

[snverhallen]

I am seriously considering getting an iPhone here in Germany, but I need advice on one thing. T-Mobile's iPhone plans come with "internet flatrate," or theoretically unlimited usage, but there is an important "gotcha" literally buried in the fine print. The gotcha is that after one exceeds a monthly volume of 300 MB (or 1GB or 5GB, depending on which plan one selects), they throttle the bandwidth back to 64k downstream/ 16k upstream for the rest of the month! This seriously detracts from the 3G experience, needless to say! I understand this is necessary for them to avoid kiddies signing up for the cheapest plan and then streaming YouTube 24x7, but the caps seem a bit stingy to me.

So, the question for those who've had their phone a while, what is "typical" usage? My profile is: middle-age professional whose internet use would be confined to email, maps, web surfing, etc. No heavy video or music streaming expected.

For what your doing 300 MB should be sufficient. One thing, you should also account how much data usage will be via WiFi. If your going to be doing a lot via WiFi, then 300 MB should be plenty I would think.

snverhallen

 

[scaredpoet]

My "typical" monthly data usage on my iPhone is around 250MB. However, there's an important caveat: I have access to WiFi at home and at work, and during those periods, my iPhone is using those networks instead of 3G data.

If you have WiFi at home/work/both, then I wouldn't worry too much.