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?

  • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    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.

  • Libb@piefed.social
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    7 days ago

    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.

  • sarmale@lemmy.zip
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    7 days ago

    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

    • beegnyoshi@lemmy.zip
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      6 days ago

      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.

  • Nighed@feddit.uk
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    5 days ago

    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.

    • Mothra@mander.xyzOP
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      5 days ago

      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.

      • Nighed@feddit.uk
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        5 days ago

        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.

  • clif@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    $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.

    • Mothra@mander.xyzOP
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      5 days ago

      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!

      • clif@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        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…

        • Mothra@mander.xyzOP
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          5 days ago

          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?

  • Rose@slrpnk.net
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    5 days ago

    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.)

  • 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.

      • 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.

      • Kristell@herbicide.fallcounty.omg.lol
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        7 days ago

        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

  • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
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    7 days ago

    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.

  • BurgerBaron@piefed.social
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    7 days ago

    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.

  • tal@lemmy.today
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    7 days ago

    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.

    • Mothra@mander.xyzOP
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      7 days ago

      Of course, I’m just surprised there is practically no market for low usage people.

  • IronKrill@lemmy.ca
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    5 days ago

    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.