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Data Caps
It's becoming more and more common these days for both mobile providers and internet service providers to instate data caps.
Does your mobile provider and or ISP have a data cap on any of your plans? Are there any overages to these caps at all if you were to exceed the cap? What are your thoughts on data caps in general? |
For mobile broadband, I used to survive on 200 mb of data. It seems a bit much at first but my usage had increased and I ended up wasting those 200mb of data every week. xD Until I finally upgraded the data plan to 10 GB shared between our phone lines (mines & my parents' lines). We're only a month in our new data plan and we only wasted 2 GB between us. It costs less than having a non-shared data plan.
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When I was with T-Mobile, my data cap was 5 GB, if I remember correctly. That was too much for me, though; at the end of each month when I checked my usage, it would always be somewhere around 1 to 2 GB. Perfectly understandable, because I don't really do much things with my phone's Internet, really, aside from browsing some sites and using Spotify every morning to listen to music. Due to all this, I wound up downgrading to 3 GB. xD;; Am with a different provider now, but data cap is still the same.
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What I like about T-Mobile's mobile data is that it's technically unlimited. If you spend your "limited" cap, T-Mobile will slow down your data speed. You'd still be able to connect to the internet and do things, but it'll be much slower.
AT&T (where I'm at rn), is strict. Back when I had 200mb of data, if I waste it all, I get another 200 mb added to my bill, which is $15 extra. That killed our bill when my dad wasted his data cap almost everyday for work purposes, so we finally switched to a shared data cap, which is sooo much better. |
My home internet connection has a cap of 250GB total transferred and I can hit it if I'm watching a lot of Netflix and torrenting a lot that month. Usually don't, though. If I do they throttle the ♥♥♥♥ out of me u_u
My mobile cap is 4 GB and shared but we never hit it :3 I'm not a fan of them but I guess it was inevitable when they realized they could profit off of people going over some arbitrary amount. |
My mobile data is on a family plan with my parents, so we have 4GB shared between us. I'm the only one that really uses any of it though, so we never even come close to hitting it.
My home internet is uncapped, but that's mostly because it's crappy Verizon DSL - which is the only "high-speed" internet option here. Once I move out, I'll probably wind up getting cable - which means I'd have the same cap as Cordelia since we'd have the same ISP and probably the same plan. I can't see myself using 250GB, but it depends on how much Netflix streaming I do. |
My internet doesn't have quota limit, but there's a cap like a time limit on how many hours you can login
Everyone in this house using mobile service with a monthly or daily quota and may come with data and service quota. I believe why ISP/Cellular Provider make list of available package for hefty or small amount of price, think the economy and choices that made for us. Like say you want to buy 3GB plan for hefty amount of money so you can download and browse, but when you used that data you have to buy or expand again, there's a option where you can buy "unlimited data" but with time/without time, these plans don't come cheap, but some provider do provide cheaply with time plan. |
I recall my old phone with Virgin Mobile to have unlimited data, but a throttle after 2GB. I never went past maybe 200MB to be honest. :P
I'm not aware of any sort of cap on our home internet, but then again I don't pay for the internet (or the cable for that matter) and even though I torrent generously and stream about an hour of TV nightly, I've never hit it. :> |
I'm grandfathered in on a contract with AT&T, so I still have my unlimited data that gets throttled after 3 or 4 GB of usage, I think. With no internet at home, that happens. u_u;
When we had satellite internet, we had a monthly cap of 17000 MB, I believe..which we would hit frequently (due to me u_u) It sucks not being able to get DSL out where we live. D: |
Uncapped phone and internet there and I freakin' love it. The general trend seems to be that broadband is slowly getting rid of caps across the world, but mobile's taking a little longer, especially now with the introduction of 4G as something marketable. Which kinda sucks, but I definitely hope that the end-result is just uncapped data on anything. Bandwidth needs to keep following the trend of getting cheaper and cheaper.
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This applies to me, but it's far from a burden. I wouldn't have home internet if I didn't have a prepaid MiFi modem from Verizon. It's got a 3GB limit, but I've learned a lot of tricks to keep from using it all up (in fact, since I've gotten my new laptop I've barely been using half my monthly allotment) and still enjoy all the stuff I do online.
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My old internet connection have caps depending on how much the price of the package I wanted to buy, lately my cap is around 5 GB (plus about 12 GB, only at overnight), and I have to conserve so that I won't hit the cap until it's past a month or I can't use it anymore, and it's one tough task.
However, I'm glad my new net is not capped anymore. |
I just got a new cell for my bday from my mother my cap is 2.5 Gb at the moment but that might change next when I rework my plan. I have feeling I'm going to pass it. But as for My home web I think its unlimited as now but I'm not sure.
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Data caps on wired internet - be it DSL or fiber - is a terrible idea. Whether you use up your data cap or not makes absolutely no difference to the costs that the ISP has to hook you up to the internet. Data caps are nonsense, and the entire idea that you can demand money for your data cap has no association to real world costs whatsoever.
First we need to clarify what you actually buy from your ISP. This is what happens with your monthly fee:
And you might say: Well aside from the fact that these ISP's operate with about a 90% profit margin (which is ridiculous) there is not really anything wrong with this, right? But where exactly is the extra cost of you downloading 500 GB instead of 250 GB I ask? Nowhere. Data caps are specifically designed to create an artificial expense. It is money directly into the ISP's already bulging pockets, and it must be stopped. |
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