How much is your monthly average mobile/phone data usage?
I rarely use over 2GB of data per month. Usually most of my data traffic happens over wifi. Curious.
If you want to know why I'm asking:
My phone provider just decided to upgrade my subscription plan some ridiculous amount. I was on a cheap prepaid 18GB every 28 days plan, with data rollover. (I got nearly 900 GB of rollover data just sitting there, accumulated over the years).
Now they increased both their price and data cap about +60%. For me this is absolutely unnecessary. I was already paying for more than what I used.
Then I tried to switch providers, and realized this is the new baseline in the country, at least for monthly prepaid. Eventually I found a few providers that offer something more affordable, but it's only long expiry plans with a lot less data. Works for me though, not complaining.
I'm just surprised with the sheer amounts in most monthly plans, am I some kind of low usage freak?
More or less 0. Just like I don't use my phone much, I seldom use any data. I don't watch/listen to content on my phone, I don't take much photos. I don't even check my emails.
I just checked on their website, for January I'm sitting at an impressive 360 megs (130 giga available monthly) but this month is a massive increase in my usual data consumption as I've taken a lot more pictures than I use to (we're visiting new apartments).
I pay 12€/m each for both my spouse and mine (each with a 130g plan that we never use, it's the smallest plan we could get), plus 2€/m for a third line that has no data plan at all (that we use as a 'trash/publicly shared number' we almost never answer). This cheap plan could suit us if it wasn't that limited when moving abroad (the reason why I pay for those 130g plans we don't use is they don't have those limits) and if it had some data associated to it for those rare times when we need it, like it just happened this month. Those plans are all without engagement (and we provide our own phones)
Here in France, customers need to regularly check their invoice to make sure the operator has not silently activated a new 'feature' free 'for the first month' that automatically switch to the paid tier the following month. Without the customer asking anything. It happens very often. And it can quickly ad up.
20 euro, unlimited calls and data. Though i dont buy it every month only when I'll need it.
Romania, currently paying 2€ / month for 75GB, never had to worry, didn't even knew the cap until now - I thought it was unlimited. At most I used 20GB / month which to be honest surprised me a bit.
Pretty happy with Digi
About Digi, here in Portugal it's a bit iffy. Sometimes calls don't arrive, mobile data doesn't work in the subway, along with some other nitpicks, but it's definitely gotten better since I started using it. I get unlimited data for fairly cheap which is cool.
It's not like I need to be connected to the internet at all times, so my biggest peeve is definitely the fact that for some ungodly reason whenever I stop getting mobile data I need to fully reboot my phone to get it back again. Turning mobile data on and off, or setting airplane mode on and off doesn't work for some reason.
But something to take into account is that (and this is purely anecdotal) coincidentally the moment I started using digi, I started getting spam calls en masse, specifically from Iberdrola. Most of the time once a day, but at some point it reached multiple times a day. I never answered, but would search the number online and see that it was spam. Though it could very much have been a coincidence, it still makes digi feel a bit sus to me. Rarely do I ever use it without a vpn.
My actual phone doesn't have data, my home internet uses mobile data though as I have a 4G router. That is averaging about 4TB/year, or 333GB/month, I pay £24/month for unlimited data on that.
My operator gives me 150gb for 7.99€. It actually started with 30gb for the same price but they've been upgrading my gb almost yearly without price increase.
As I stream music from my jellyfin server for around 6-8 hours a day (most of my office time) and watch some shows on my lunch time, my monthly consumption is around 60-70gb a month.
But simply because I know I have more than enough to not worry about the streaming quality of my files, otherwise I'd be at maybe 10 or so.
does the work not allow you to use their WiFi?
I work for a somewhat big company with one of the dumbest IT depts ever. On top of not wanting to risk being spied on what I do or not do with my private phone and life, there's also the fact that their rules for a "safe browsing" are really, REALLY stupid (like blocking access to Siemens website because they use "weird" protocols to transfer files for their devices firmware or their webinars: p2p).
I find more often than not having to do a hotspot with my phone so I can connect with my computer to simply access work related websites because IT is just too dumb to understand that in a company there should be different network profiles depending on the worker and, instead, they apply a general rule in which they consider the same "threats" for a marketing employee than for an OT (operational technologies) employee.
Similar here yeah. FLAC file streaming is the majority of my usage.
Yeah... I actually sat down and listened to a more recent album on FLAC and 128kbps MP3 and realized I had no idea which was which, so I figured that either my speakers, or my ears weren't HD enough to be worth the storage space xD Switched my entire library to MP3 after that
My career is a lot of sitting around idle time babysitting machines so I do actually use my mobile data. Usually 20-30GB usage unless I feel like binging a show. 80GB cap. So, if I do that it's 480p rips on Stremio.
I suspect that it wildly varies based on user.
If you use video streaming from, say, YouTube and TikTok heavily, and you do so outside of WiFi networks, I bet that you can burn through a lot of data pretty quickly.
Another user could be sitting on Lemmy or whatever all day every day and just not use much data.
Of course, I'm just surprised there is practically no market for low usage people.
About 120 GB a month. Luckily, data is unlimited.
I love how you get a warning at 2GB
At home I use my home internet so I don't use the phone's data there and I don't track it at all.
Outside my house. I noticed that I doubled my data usage since joining Lemmy, from 3-4GB per month to 6-7GB. I suspect that this is mosly because the app I'm using doesn't seem to hold much on cache, every time I'm scrolling back up it's all loading icons.
According to my carrier, I use an average of 17GB. Work WiFi isn't always reliable so sometimes I just let loose. I pay $25 monthly for unlimited, so it's not like I have to worry about it.
According to my device:
Not sure why September was so low, but I'm not surprised it's <1gb/mo. I didn't really have unlimited data until a couple of years ago, and I don't really sit around watching videos out of the house. It's mostly music, which my music is all downloaded on my phone anyway.
The spike in November is because I moved. I started walking to the store, and the internet here is less consistent, so I'm using my data more.
Nice, that's refreshing
I'm sitting on around 4.5gb with a third of the cycle to go. That's high for me, would be under 1gb if I wasn't watching the cricket for a bit on Boxing Day.
I'm mostly on the network at home or playing music from the memory card so don't need much at all, but 20gb is the lowest available with my provider.
Similar case as mine, and yes I'm also disappointed there isn't a lower option available
I got 25gb monthly plan. I utilize around 7-10gb monthly.
2-3GB. a day.
But I have a gradfathered unlimited data plan from like 18 years ago and I pay basically nothing, so I don't have any reason to limit it.
Just curious – what do you need that much data for?
Lemmy.
So Lemmy on your phone takes 600GB of carrier data per month? I guess you must be going through a lot of videos daily? That does sound like a high rate!
Just curious – what do you need that much data for?
50GB for £7.95 a month. I probably use between 10-20GB, depending on what I've got going on in my life.
543MiB last month. I mostly use the cell data for maps and messaging
My phone plan is $5 a month, for 100gib, after I hit the cap the speed gets limited to 384kbps... I'm no where near hitting my monthly cap.
Two plans, both unlimited calls and data. One is 30€, the other 15€ (the more expensive one has significantly higher speeds), on two different networks.
Depending on the moth, I tend to use 50-100 GB/month.
I'm reliably 7-8GB. It's kind of impressive, honestly, since I don't think I'm too consistent day to day
I snatched a no-monthly-payment plan sometime around 2010, and am holding to it for dear life — even though it hasn't been offered to new clients for a long time. Thankfully, where I am, the provider can't change the defining conditions of my plan.
I rarely call anyone, and don't use the internet on the phone outside of WiFi networks (I listen to downloaded podcasts and read downloaded articles instead, and use OsmAnd for maps). Which means that the fifteen bucks that I paid over three years ago still haven't been used.
How do you download articles in advance? I used to use pocket but it's been discontinued.
I still have some unread in Pocket, and also use self-hosted Wallabag. The downside of the latter is that you can't limit the number or size of the synced articles, it pulls all that's on the server (at least with the self-hosted approach). It's also a bit poorer in features comparatively and isn't developed much, if at all.
TBH I practically stopped reading outside, because I'm mostly in motion there — and on the bus it's increasingly uncomfortable to have the page shake in front of me, with my myopia. So I just put on podcasts or audiobooks from the time I'm getting dressed and all the way to the destination.
Thanks for the reply, I will checkout Wallabag.
Yea, us low data users are the exception, so they don't market to us.
In the US, USMobile has about the best rates for low data plans. I think I'm paying $20/mo for 2 lines at 4GB (shared), and adding more data in a month is cheap. So cheap I've set it to automatically add more if I go over.
It's hard to burn through half a terrabyte in a month
You just might be. I use about 10GB per month but mostly when I commute. At home and other places there is usually wifi to use.
Less than 2GB for me. I only get 2GB cuz prepaid. I don't have anybody to text or videochat and I can't stand browsing the web on small screens. My phone is low end and even then, I don't like spending my time using it for gaming. I personally don't like putting important stuff on it since somebody can steal it from me. I basically just use it for calling.
I rarely use wifi at home so about 300-900GB per month
Fair enough
According to my phone I use around 4/6GB per month (I have an unlimited plan). But I'm guessing you're in the US or Canada, I'm always boggled when I remember that data is expensive to you guys.
I'm in Australia. Bad Internet
It's not. Unlimited plans are ubiquitous and can be had for pretty cheap.
What is pretty cheap for you? Last time I was in Canada a 15GB plan costed something like $45, whereas in Europe that would be enough to get at least 2 unlimited plans and still have money for a coffee.
UK:
£5/m contract for 5GB data. Only run out once when traveling.
Looking back, I normally use about 2gb of data and 30gb of WiFi a month on my phone. Most stuff is done on my PC or laptop.
Nice. That sounds like an affordable deal.
I'm impressed at the wild variety of responses here, and also that so many don't seem to mind paying for something they don't use.
This is the cheapest I could find that wasn't dodgy in some way.
Previously I was pay as you go at 1p/mb on a different supplier, but that got discontinued.
Usually between 1 and 2 GB/month, up to 10 in months where I travel, which happens about two or three times a year.
I have a plan which increases my data cap each year, giving me 30 GB currently. It's 20 €/month, which is about average for a 5G plan of that size. I like not having to worry about my data usage.
620MB of data from last months usage. Generally all my data is via Wi-Fi as well.
That makes sense if it includes all your at home usage. So you can't see the traffic on your phone while you are not on wifi?
The Wi-Fi data for the same period was 104GB
$110/month for 6GB data but this is the US where mobile data is expensive as shit.
I usually use around 300MB
EDIT: $110 for two lines with data shared between them. The other person on the account uses more like 3GB/month and I find it funny to compare our data usage.
That's a typo, right ? Six gigabytes for a hundred and ten dollars? I'm sure I've seen better deals from others in the US in this post. Sounds rough!
tldr: Failed to mention that was total price for two lines. I added an EDIT to the original post, more info below.
Unfortunately no, and that's with a 20% discount from my previous employer. Although I should have specified that that price is for two lines with the 6GB shared between them with rollover. I look at different plans at my current carrier every now and then but they're the same or more expensive for ""unlimited"" data (typically throttled at around 3GB).
I really need to find the motivation to switch to a prepaid plan because those can be had much cheaper. Plus my current carrier is a shitass and I really shouldn't be giving them money. I've been eyeing https://www.phreeli.com/ lately...
You need motivation? Think of how much you would save over a year. Because it is an ongoing expense. At the moment you are spending $1320 dollars every year if my math is right. Judging from most comments here, prepaid plans are around $30 a month or so, that's a massive difference! What would you do with $900 to spare? Also most carriers let you keep your number, right? So what's to lose?
You gave me the motivation I needed. I started the transfer last night. Thanks bud.
Yassss!
I use around 15 GB a month out of 150. Data is cheap where I live.
Usually I get a text message a few days before the monthly data reset saying how I've used 50GB but at least I still get unlimited.
500 GB carrier data?
Edit: sorry I must cut down on the alcohol, I'm seeing double digits. You said 50 not 500...
Nearly zero since I almost never use the internet outside of home. If I know I'll be traveling, I have a separate wi-fi hotspot I pay for (a bit under 100k JPY yearly). My phone bill yearly is less than 35k JPY (usually closer to 33k but leaving a buffer in case I make a lot of outgoing calls)
Lucky you! I find I still need to use the Internet on the go, even if for small things.
Roughly 15-20gbs per month. I drive a truck and part of my day job is literally sitting around at farms and waiting. So I do a lot of scrolling to kill time.
I use about 1 - 2GB per month of my 40GB so I have way more mobile data available than I need.
I think it's interesting that they increased the price for your plan. I live in Germany and I think the only thing that's constantly getting cheaper are these mobile data plans. They always upgrade the data but the price stays the same.
You and I, on the same page I guess.
What happened with the price increase was that all major providers are ditching the 4g network only plans, and now all their plans have 5g as well as 4g access. This comes with better speeds and whatnot. And this also "justifies" their price increase.
However, I don't care - I have no need for 5G network. My phone isn't even capable of using it. It's not even an old phone, I got it a bit over a year ago.
They didn't charge me yet, they sent a warning that they will do so next month unless I cancel.
I suspect for some reason they want to get rid of all low data users, but I don't understand why. Very few carriers have options for people who need less than 10 GB a month.
I use very little, so I picked a plan with a pay-as-you-use data. It's expensive for the amount you get ($10/Gb), but since I seldom use more than 1gb, it ends up cheaper overall.
I have a 15GB plan shared among 5 phones for 4 people. We usually use around 8-10GB. It brings my total bill for all 5 phones to $150/month.
I pay $80/month for high speed cable Internet for the house and I regularly update the wifi router. At work/school the wife and kids have wifi.
I even pay $225 per year for unlimited Wi-Fi in my work truck.
It varies, but so far this month (day 11) I'm at 80GB and 300GB a month isn't unusual. At home and work I typically get 500+ Mbps download so I don't tend to bother with WiFi. I'm currently paying £12/mo for a SIM-only service.
You don't use WiFi at all and all traffic is by phone? Wow that sounds intense
Looks like 47 GiB across two lines last month.
We only use WiFi at home, not when out
So apparently I'm averaging about 6GB on mobile data going by the past 3 months, and according to my router, 90GB the past 30 days on my phone via WiFi, though I imagine some of that is probably LAN traffic.
Gotta say the on WiFi number surprised me
I have unlimited data, so I don't usually look at this stuff haha
So 6GB over 3 months averages to 2GB per month. Not unlike me...
Ah sorry, I wasn't clear
6GB average per month
I think it was one month 3, another 10 and one about 5
Fair enough!
I’m not seeing that itemized in my bill or providers portal. However I do pay for unlimited data so maybe they think it doesn’t matter
I looked at the year in review and I am the lowest data usage in my family with 48G last year. However I have poor cell reception at home so am usually on WiFi
It's in your phone under your mobile connection
As far as I know, iPhones have no monthly detail. It’s only ‘since statistics was last reset’. I haven’t reset, but I got a new phone in October, so I have 16 hours of data, 292G since then
….. which is not at all similar to what my cell provider thinks
Edit: looking a bit further down the screen, apparently statistics aren’t reset with a new iPhone. 292G since July 31, 2018, which averages about 3.2G/month if my math is right, and that is similar to my cell providers data
Over all of my SIMs combined, around 20Gigs. This means my phone, my car, my work laptop, and this one hobby project that involves an LTE modem.
Just looked through the carrier app, I seem to hover around 3gb monthly.
I could comfortably lower this down to 1gb tbh, but like you I have a plan with rollover and a toooon of data built up so lately I don't even bother trying to save. Most places I just stay on Data even if I could log into their WiFi.
I'm the same, in the sense of not bothering to save... I'm just surprised the current market is forcing us to pay so much extra for something a lot of people don't need.
I bought 1gb data-only esim several months ago. I think I have 500mb left. Mostly, I use wifi when at home and out. The phone is degoogled (so it uses very little data) and I have data saver on all the time. Most of my data usage is during a power outage.
I have a 20GB subscription for just under €30, but I normally use just over 10, so I have around 30GB at the start of every month.
Even if ran by many of the same companies, prices have always been higher in Norway than in most of the rest of the continent, both because of the more complicated infrastructure, but also because we sadly are willing to pay more. Cheaper brands appear all the time by renting the bigger companies infrastructure, but they never last long, so I've opted for a little more expensive to not have to switch out operator once a year. So yeah, I'm part of the problem.
Yes that's a similar situation to Australia. But here I've seen some of these cheaper brands succeed, in fact my current (soon to be previous) carrier started this way a few years ago. And just like you, I could have saved some buck had I moved to a different plan earlier, but I didn't mind the old price so I didn't bother searching.
Basically not much. This month, 133 megabytes as of 18th of January. And all of it it's free anyway.
I don't really need mobile data aside of stints to the town, every place I need to go to probably has Wi-Fi anyway. We have a municipal Wi-Fi network at public institutions, it probably helps a lot. (And I don't even use free wifi at commercial institutions.)
I have a 100GB/month for about 13€/month.
I use between 10 and 30
I get around 70GB with unlimited everything aside from international calling and roaming on my plan, I typically only use around 10 a month. They recently started offering 150GB plans for an extra 5$. My plan is $50/mo.
The key is to negotiate your plan, never go with the advertised plan. Spend an hour or two on the phone or in the store to get yourself a deal.
As a Canadian trapped under the Big Three, scrolling through this thread is killing me :(
I have 130GB at 70CAD/mo. It was the cheapest plan I could get with data. I don't need nearly that much. I use between 20-40GB/mo and that's only because I don't bother to turn on my WiFi since I know I'll never reach my limit.
Last month I used 1.6GB.
Same as op, one or two gigs, at most. Usually under a gig. Very rarely, I have to create a hot-spot for my laptop which might increase the numbers a bit.
I don't even know how much data my operator allows for, 150 gigs maybe, or maybe it's unlimited nowadays, I'd have to look it up.
I had no idea so I went to check. I get over 75GB in my plan but I never go above 20. Currently sitting at 8 for the last 30 days. Non-carrier data usage does indeed exceed 75GB though :)
I mean, I've had unlimited data for ages, so it doesn't matter. Around 36gb this month, just checked. But really, almost every mobile plan here is unlimited data. Finland has gooooood mobile network.
It was not uncommon for me to hit warnings that I'd used 50G. I changed the warnings to 70G at some point and still got the warning a few times
Dunno. I get unlimited so I've not checked in years.
Probably about 2GB ish, given I'm usually on WiFi
I average about 6gb on mobile data and 150gb on WiFi. I download a lot of stuff.
I'm on a 30gb tariff and they keep trying to get me on unlimited mobile data which is totally pointless
I'm also exceptionally low usage. But I was able to find a very small plan for a very low price
If you can't get away from big data plans, can you tether other devices to your phone? Like supply your home Internet from the cellular data connection?
I change my location frequently so I'm not responsible for any of the wifi networks I regularly use. If I was bound to a same address the whole time and managed that, then it would be an option since I'm a low data user in general.
About 20 GB a month because I don't have Wi-Fi, so I have to do everything on mobile data. I used to use less than 2 GB half a year ago (in the same situation) and it has gone up over the months as I do more things on my mobile data.
72,08GB so far in this month. Needed to do some searching on my phone as i did not know where to see it.
4GBish a month. I pay 25$ a month for 16gb
I WFH so between 3 - 4gb per month on mobile network. If I'm on holiday or have to head to the office more for some reason it'll go up.
Most of it is audio, either music or podcasts, so with a bit of planning I could pre-download stuff on WiFi if I needed to cut down.
I'm in the UK and totally agree the packages are just ridiculous in price and data limits, I get by on £5 a month rolling - Lebara, Lyca - seem to offer the best small deals.
For comparison I use 30-40gb on WiFi.
Interesting you mentioned Lyca as a provider of small deals. I'm in Australia and we also have Lyca here, it's not super popular but they have one of the most affordable plans. I didn't pick it because they don't offer keeping your previous phone number.
It's a legal requirement in the UK. Mobile number is used in so many places it's effectively acting as an ID.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/phone-numbers/number-portability-info
I have unlimited date and have used about 6GB this month. Costs me $65/month.
My usage is pretty high - currently up to 40 gigabytes for January. I tend to do 60-70 per month, mostly thanks to music streaming without a ton of local storage. I broke 100 gigs in December though; more than once, I found myself wasting my holiday breaks watching Instagram reels.
I also travel for work, hardly any of this usage was over wifi.
Germany, Unlimited (around 50 or so GB and need to manually top it up once reached to extend) 5G (not quite lol) for around 20€/month
Usually consume around 5gb.
If I feel adventurous I can consume as mich as I want because I'll start streaming from my server.
5 to 15GB per month. I work a job out of office/home, so I am almost never on wifi. My plan is 60GB though so I just stopped thinking about it a long time ago. Even being out of town in hotels streaming YouTube and Jellyfin I have never gone over 20GB.
Before this job I had 250MB and almost never hit it, only using carrier rewards to get extra data during travel months.
Never really paid any attention to it. I've had unlimited data plan since like 2012
depends if I watch porn without wifi or not
Without wifi, my question is for phone traffic while you are not latched onto any wifi or broadband
Well...
I don't have a smartphone anymore. I use a dumbphone
It's still a phone, so...