Amount of Data Used Per Month - RV-Dreams Community Forum

TonyM · RV-Dreams Community Member

Amount of Data Used Per Month

Dutch · RV-Dreams Family Member

We typically hit around 150 GB per month with occasional months closer to 200 GB when we stream more than usual.

Second Chance · RV-Dreams Family Member

Before we got on the prepaid unlimited plan last fall, we had a 22GB/month plan and typically used about half of it each month... but we didn't stream HD video (Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc.) with that plan. It was all we needed to operate the hot-spot with two laptops for email, browsing, etc., and use the two smartphones for whatever was needed. Needless to say, digital life is a bit different now with the unlimited prepaid plan.

Rob

NWescapee · RV-Dreams Family Member

Everyone's needs are going to be different, we stream a lot through Hulu, Netflix, etc. plus I work from home full time and that requires data. We easily use 150GB/mo between 3 different plans and some months we're close to 250 GB. Not sure we've ever used more than that.

3 laptops, 1 tablet, 3 phones and 2 Kindles with 2 grandfathered unlimited data plans and 1 AT&T unlimited data plan.

-- Edited by NWescapee on Monday 24th of June 2019 03:58:52 PM

Julie and Ray · RV-Dreams Family Member

I have Verizon's "unlimited" data plan, which gets throttled back at 20Gb, my wife has AT&T "unlimited" that throttles back at 15Gb. We only use the phone's hot spot for data. We are not TV watchers so our only usage is laptops and Kindles. If we are at a campground with no wifi, we use up a good chunk of our data. Our month end dates are staggered so we switch off who's hot spot to use on a given day based on who's almost at the end of their month. If the campground has wifi, of course we use very little of our available data.

RonC · RV-Dreams Family Member

I would consider us to be heavy users. I have an unlimited pre paid Verizon plan for our 8800L MiFi and an AT&T wireless internet with 150 GB. We use whichever one is working best. When we are on the AT&T unit, we can burn thru 150 GB in about 10 days. We recently dumped DirecTV and are now streaming with YouTube TV. This has caused our data burn to go WAY UP. For that reason we are getting a Winegard Togo roadlink which is a roof mounted small dome that is both a wifi extender and an LTE 2X2 MIMO cellular hot spot. The Togo (unit itself costs $399 plus installation) can be had with an unlimited plan for $360 per year (paid upfront) which equals $30 per month ... this is the deal of the century on unlimited, unthrottled high speed data ... but it is only for AT&T.

Based on our current AT&T use ... I'd guess our usage to be 500 MB per month ... but we're very heavy users, mostly due to the streaming.

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

We don't stream much, but we still use 60 to 100GB per month. When stationary last winter we used more than 200GB per month since we had cable internet and a 4K TV.

RonC · RV-Dreams Family Member

Julie and Ray wrote:
I have Verizon's "unlimited" data plan, which gets throttled back at 20Gb, my wife has AT&T "unlimited" that throttles back at 15Gb. We only use the phone's hot spot for data. We are not TV watchers so our only usage is laptops and Kindles. If we are at a campground with no wifi, we use up a good chunk of our data. Our month end dates are staggered so we switch off who's hot spot to use on a given day based on who's almost at the end of their month. If the campground has wifi, of course we use very little of our available data.

As you pointed out ... "unlimited" is usually limited in some way. Our Verizon PRE paid unlimited is truly unlimited and unthrottled ... but it is always network managed ... which means it can be (but it doesn't mean that it will be) deprioritized when towers become congested. This happens occasionally, but it never slows down to the point of being unusable. The Winegard Togo unlimited and unthrottled plan becomes network managed after 22 GB, but that also doesn't mean it slows down ... just that it can be deprioritized when cell towers become congested. This is different than throttling after 22 GB, where the speed is severely limited for the rest of the billing cycle. Network managment might not even be noticeable ... speed could be slowed from 40 Mbps to 10 Mbps and the impact on streaming is not noticeable ... throttling will stop streaming, or make it buffer often. I only point this out because when folks buy "unlimited" plans, they need to read the fine print to understand what they are buying and to make sure it will work with what they intend to do.

Hdrider · RV-Dreams Family Member

Before we got the Verizon truly unlimited plan we got by on about 15GB per month but we had never streamed a movie in our life. Now that we HAVE the unlimited plan and have learned to stream we go through 80GB per month on average.

TonyM · RV-Dreams Community Member

We wanted to stay with Verizon and the best we could see was the 15G plan that doubles to 30G when prepaid. We have never streamed snd so we don’t know what we are missing. This should work until something better comes along.

Sushidog · RV-Dreams Family Member

We are members of the FMMC. We joined because of their excellent $69.95/mo roadside assistance plan. They have 2 plans for their members, both $49.95/mo. We chose the Sprint plan over the Verizon plan because it is a truly an unlimited plan with no hard cap like their Verizon plan has, slowing you to 70 k (virtual dial up speed) after 25 g regardless of tower traffic. There is also no commitment with Sprint - you can quit anytime you find something something better. Their Verizon plan requires a 2 year contract. I use about 35G a month of data. It is a little slower than Verizon at about 4 Mbps throughput in the boonies (maybe 7 Mbps near cities.) One thing I like about it is unlimited roaming (though at a slightly slower speed, but still fast enough to stream videos with minimal or no buffering unless the tower is super congested - which has been rare for me so far). This is important because Sprint has a smaller coverage area out west, but it doesn't affect my internet usage (I'm roaming in the boonies of Utah as I type this). As long as I have some type of signal, I'm good to go.

Chip

campuskidd · RV-Dreams Community Member

Is it really required to have at least 100GB a month if you're going to stream series and movies?

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

campuskidd wrote:
Is it really required to have at least 100GB a month if you're going to stream series and movies?

https://www.rvmobileinternet.com/guides/tv-movie-entertainment-on-the-road/ will give you the answers. The basic answer is streaming uses a lot of data, 3GB per hour for HD, so that is only 33 hours of streaming per 100GB.

RonC · RV-Dreams Family Member

We exclusively stream ... no other source of TV. So we watch ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox via streaming. In addition to that we have many other channels (HGTV, ESPN, etc) that are also a part of our viewing via streaming. Our provider is YouTube TV and it's pretty awesome. It has a cloud based DVR that is unlimited, live TV if you want it, and a bunch of movies and series if that is your thing. We had DirecTV for 32 years and I can honestly say that this is "as good as" with none of the downsides ... like Equipment Failure, Dishes, Clear Southern Sky, rain interruptions, etc. We now ask for shade, where as before we asked for "open sites". Streaming uses a lot of data, but that's what unlimited is for right?

Doing what we do, we use at least 500GB per month (now that I've calculated it, it is like 4X that). TV is often on 14 hours a day ... always streaming. We are about the worst case for data use. If you use the 5GB per hour rule for HD TV and we have it on for 14 hours per day ... that's 70 GB per day ... or 2130 GB per month. As I said, streaming is a data hog.

-- Edited by RonC on Tuesday 17th of September 2019 02:29:53 PM

-- Edited by RonC on Tuesday 17th of September 2019 02:33:57 PM

-- Edited by RonC on Tuesday 17th of September 2019 02:35:27 PM