Find out the 5 Gigabyte (5 GB) limit
TechnologyIt’s time to face the music.
These companies are here to make money. That is priority number one. Good customer service, good prices, and good plans only exist to make a profit.
Companies used to offer unlimited plans until we weren’t earning that much (read: we downloaded too much). That led industries to create the popular structure of:
- Basic Plans – 50 Megabytes (MB) or less
- ‘Average’ Plans – 5 Gigabytes (GB) AC
- Unlimited Plans
Granted, most people understand what unlimited means, but What the heck is 50MB or 5GB?
It’s not like cell phone companies where you can count the minutes. We know what the minutes are. We all read time, all the time!
Tell someone you’ll be there in 5 minutes and they’ll understand. Tell them you’re exceeding your usage limit by the next 10 Megabytes and expect it to look “lost in space”.
Today we are going to demystify all the jargon. I will guide you through:
- What can you do with 50MB of data
- What can you do with 5 GB of data
- What you can’t do with unlimited data
- How to Choose Brilliantly Choose a plan to avoid the burden of using too much bandwidth.
Basic Plans
They are ok, pretty basic. If you’re not careful, you’ll go through 50MB faster than Michael Phelps in the water at the Olympics. It’s just not much. Does that mean not getting it? Not necessarily.
An efficiency plan can work if you only check email or surf the web. Large files become questionable. Definitely be careful with Windows Update. Some updates may be 100 MB or more. The last thing you need is to get slapped with a million dollar bill and all you did was reboot your computer. Thanks Microsoft!
Downloading movies or music is out of the question. The average album is around 80MB while movies are 700MB at best. Of course, this leads to elusive questions like “What is the meaning of life?” and…
“Man, so what can 50MB get me?”
Nielsen-netratings.com says that the average American web surfer loads more than 1,500 web pages per month. Popular web pages can be added to the junk with ads, so each one accounts for 100-200KB of downloaded data.
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– CNN.com is 93kb while Google is only 6kb –
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This means that, on average, a typical user will download over 20MB of data just by ‘routine’ browsing the web. However, that doesn’t include email that you can download using desktop clients like Outlook.
The problem is not so much email here, but spam. If possible, try to avoid using Outlook to download all your email. Try a web-based email service like Gmail or Yahoo. That way, if you get spam, it’s in a folder that you don’t download (read: pay for it).
Here’s a table summarizing what we’ve talked about so far:
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Activity/Download | File size | # of times before reaching 50 MB
1 email | 10KB | 5,000
1 visit to the CNN website | ~100KB | 512
1 song downloaded from iTunes | 4MB | 13
1 typical 3 minute YouTube/Google video | 5MB | 10
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So you just need an email? So you can get a basic plan. If not, then maybe you should consider:
5 Gigabyte plans
I’ll tell you directly. A 5 GB plan will cover the needs of most people. It is not for advanced users. Now, how do you know if you are a regular or advanced user? Ask yourself these questions:
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Questions | Average user | power user
Do you use the internet more than 3 hours/day? | Not | Yeah
Will an airline card be your main connection? | Not | Yeah
Do you download movies or music regularly? | Not | Yeah
Do you stream movies/music regularly? | Not | Yeah
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Did you answer yes to more than 1 of these questions? Then you are probably a power user and should check out an unlimited plan. I’m not sure? Take a look at:
What can 5 Gigabytes give me?
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Activity/Download | File size | # of times before reaching 50 MB
1 email | 10KB | 500,000 times
1 visit to the CNN.com website | 100KB | 5,242 times
1 song downloaded from iTunes | 4MB | 1250 times
1 typical 3 minute YouTube/Google video | 5MB | 1,000 times
1 hour of 56k audio stream | 25MB | 200 hours
1 typical 5 minute video on iTunes | 30MB | 167 times
1 hour of video streaming or two-way video chat | 52MB | 97 hours
1 typical 45 minute TV show on iTunes | 200MB | 25 times
1 full movie download (2 hours) | 1.5GB | 3 times
1 Full DVD Disc Image | 4.5GB | 1 time
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Unlimited Plans
The simple fact that you are reading this part probably means that you might need this plan.
Whether you’re moving from airport to airport, creating web pages or downloading movies and music, you’ll always be connected. You are a power user through and through.
Mobile broadband providers may cringe at the mention of their name. Nothing more than unlimited will suffice. yes that’s you there are only a handful of operators that provide unlimited mobile broadband. See the end of this article to find out where you can find them.
While the plan may be unlimited, ‘Prohibited’ uses may cause your provider to prohibit it. Those include:
- Always on connections like P2P, BitTorrent, server devices
- spam
- Auto-responders generating ‘excessive’ traffic
- any form of hacking
Think of it this way. They just don’t want you sucking up the entire internet by yourself like an industrial vacuum cleaner.. Although it might be fun, it would be selfish. Other than that you should be fine.
So, to recap on what we covered:
- Basic plans are great for just browsing the web and checking email
- Average (or 5 GB) plans work well for most people
- Unlimited plans are for advanced users who use the Internet “intensively”
- Don’t use mobile broadband for ‘questionable’ activities (if you do, ‘I didn’t see anything!’)
Now you know what each plane can bring you. Heck, you probably already know which one you’ll get.
Hold on though.
What if you get it and it doesn’t work for you? Or do you already have it and you realized that it is not for you? It would really bite to be stuck for 2 years paying for something you don’t like.