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Comment by saturdaysaint | Hacker News Reader

FWIW, my Virgin Mobile plan costs $60 a month and isn't slowed until 23 gigabytes. Their unlimited plans for new customers are $50 per month.

As much as Google touts the "flexibility" to theoretically pay less, using less than 6 gigabytes is pretty difficult in 2018 unless you use very few services and have no interest in video.

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It's not difficult if you're on wifi for the majority of the time.

For me the best two parts about Fi when I was using it was the free extra data sims and the fact that you could roam data internationally for no extra charge. I'm abroad ~6 times per year so not having to pay out the nose in extra charges or spend time walking around a new city looking for a sim card the first day of my trip made it worthwhile. The actual comparison with other providers from a monthly data cost perspective were kind of a wash

Eventually left when I wanted to switch back to an iPhone

It's two of us on my plan and the combined usage rarely goes above 4GB. We look at videos a lot, but most of that happens on WiFi. Most of my data is used by Chrome, followed by gReader. Occasionally, Maps spikes when I'm in a new area or abroad. For the other user, it's often Google Play Music streaming radios while driving.

that said, i average around 1 gig a month, so i suspect some of this is usage patterns - I am in wifi the vast majority of the time.

Interesting. I almost never break the 1GB mark.

I rarely go over 2 GB a month. What are you doing to use so much? Or are you on a group plan?

Google Maps everyday and streaming music and sometimes video. That's enough to cross 2GB trivially unless you are on something like T-Mobile that does not consider major audio-video streaming sites against their data cap.

Do you opportunistically use Wi-Fi? Or just LTE all the time?

I have WiFi on when I am at home or work. When I am outdoors I often force it off because it ends up connecting to weak signals that are not actually useful and basically causes the phone to not 'see' any internet.

I hate this. there should be a feature that ignores weak signals beyond the whitelisted ones. whenever I turn off the wifi to ignore the weak signal, I wind up forgetting to turn it back on, racking up gigs of data in the process.

This has happened more times than I care to keep count. Everything considered crossing 2GB in a month is extremely normal for me

If you're using Google Maps every day, you offline your area within the app. Drastically reduces data usage.

Shouldn't Google Maps be caching this data?

Offline maps allows you to save all of the streets in a large radius, the size of a medium-size city. You can also save an area in advance, such as if you're going to an area on a trip.

Caching just saves the streets you get routed on, after the face.

> unless you are on something like T-Mobile that does not consider major audio-video streaming sites against their data cap

Isn't it odd that people don't raise their placards against this example of network non-neutrality?

Isn't it odd that people don't raise their placards against this example of network non-neutrality?

Isn't this the main complaint about network non-neutrality? That ISPs get to pick winners and losers in the streaming space based on the deals they make with the big players.

The reason that breaking net neutrality is a problem is that it allows the carriers to pick winners and losers based on special deals and makes it harder for new entrants. T-mobile doesn't require payment from the video/audio providers and doesn't discriminate. You just have to follow their documented guidelines, have legal content, and sign up with them.

They even have one porn site at least (evidence they aren't discriminating based on content). But they don't advertise it.

In other words, they may be breaking the letter of the concept of Net Neutrality but not the spirit.

I admit I am pretty uninterested in ever watching video on a phone screen. But I use tons of navigation, streaming music, etc on my phone, and rarely exceed a couple of gigs. Because it's on wifi at home and at work.

Does that include international coverage?

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