Four more gigs! Four more gigs!

El_Machinae

El_Machinae

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Pimp my ride!

Last year I found out that I have a giant dataplan. I found out thusly.

Clerk helping me: "holy cow, that's a giant dataplan! How'd you manage that? [click, click, click] Oh, I see you're in a plan from years ago. We've not offered that for a long time"

Me: "oh, my wife bought this plan. I just started taking it over in 2013."

So, I have 6.0 gigs per month for $15. Apparently, this is pretty good. My carrier (Fido) will allow me to 'downgrade' this plan to 2.0 gigs and cut my monthly fee by $15. And then it's $10 per gig after that. Now, looking at my data usage, I rarely get near 2.0 gigs. And that's with occasional youtube streaming! I google stuff, read email, or read facebook to my heart's content. I'll use google maps without thinking about the dataplan cost.

So, what should I be doing to be getting even more utility? Can I use this Android smartphone and this giant dataplan to make me a God amongst men? Or should I just save $15 per month and eat more chickenwings on wings&beer night?
 
El_Machinae said:
Pimp my ride!

Last year I found out that I have a giant dataplan. I found out thusly.

Clerk helping me: "holy cow, that's a giant dataplan! How'd you manage that? [click, click, click] Oh, I see you're in a plan from years ago. We've not offered that for a long time"

Me: "oh, my wife bought this plan. I just started taking it over in 2013."

So, I have 6.0 gigs per month for $15. Apparently, this is pretty good. My carrier (Fido) will allow me to 'downgrade' this plan to 2.0 gigs and cut my monthly fee by $15. And then it's $10 per gig after that. Now, looking at my data usage, I rarely get near 2.0 gigs. And that's with occasional youtube streaming! I google stuff, read email, or read facebook to my heart's content. I'll use google maps without thinking about the dataplan cost.

So, what should I be doing to be getting even more utility? Can I use this Android smartphone and this giant dataplan to make me a God amongst men? Or should I just save $15 per month and eat more chickenwings on wings&beer night?
Click to expand...

2 gigabytes is a lot of data. $15 is about a case of beer.

My Kindle has 2 GB storage which is something like 1000 books. I can't imagine filling that up every month.

I guess if you were using that data to transfer photographs for work, or presentations, you might want to keep it, but for mostly text, 2GB is obscene.
 
If you stream a lot of audio, that chews through data quickly, four gigs gives you a couple hours per day of streaming audio of average mobile stream quality.

Though for Canadians it's pretty much impossible to beat Koodo for overall plan cost. Bring your own phone and you get unlimited Canada-wide calling, SMS/MMS/CID/VM/etc. and 5GB data on the Bellus network for $50/m.

In the past four years I've gone from Koodo->Fido->Wind->Koodo, switching whenever a better plan value is available.

And FWIW, I'm not sure that you can simply drop your 6GB plan to 2GB for $15. The 6GB promo plan was $30, but isn't currently in-market or compatible with current in-market plans. I suspect what they're doing is moving you to a current in-market plan that happens to have 2GB of data - you'll want to be careful to compare base plan features if this is the case.
 
I've not really found utility in streaming audio since I use podcasts so heavily (and thus use wifi to get them). Using the dataplan means I could download them on the bus, but I'm not sure that's a significant quality of life improvement.

So, I'm asking for help in brainstorming. Am I gonna want to pay this $15/mo premium so I can still get 6.0 gigs/month in 2015? 2016? That's pretty hundreds of dollars!

(yes, I'm comparing the baseline for the rest of the plans. Roughly equivalent in tradeoffs. It's the massive dataplan disparity that leaps out)
 
El_Machinae said:
Pimp my ride!

Last year I found out that I have a giant dataplan. I found out thusly.

Clerk helping me: "holy cow, that's a giant dataplan! How'd you manage that? [click, click, click] Oh, I see you're in a plan from years ago. We've not offered that for a long time"

Me: "oh, my wife bought this plan. I just started taking it over in 2013."

So, I have 6.0 gigs per month for $15. Apparently, this is pretty good. My carrier (Fido) will allow me to 'downgrade' this plan to 2.0 gigs and cut my monthly fee by $15. And then it's $10 per gig after that. Now, looking at my data usage, I rarely get near 2.0 gigs. And that's with occasional youtube streaming! I google stuff, read email, or read facebook to my heart's content. I'll use google maps without thinking about the dataplan cost.

So, what should I be doing to be getting even more utility? Can I use this Android smartphone and this giant dataplan to make me a God amongst men? Or should I just save $15 per month and eat more chickenwings on wings&beer night?
Click to expand...

Honestly, if you can spare the extra money, I would keep your current plan. You can't readily anticipate future usage habits and more importantly, you can't anticipate how much the carriers will change future plans (for good, but usually, for ill). Keeping your plan will ensure you stay grandfathered-in against any future negative trends in your carriers plans.

If I were you, I'd start using your mobile internet more such as downloading podcasts while on the go and such.
 
Zelig said:
Well if you get a Google Glass you could have it snap pictures from your perspective every couple minutes and upload them to a live feed.

And profit?
Click to expand...

Why live feed though? :) Are you a spy, or a CNN e-reporter? :)

I'm guessing I could do the same thing better with a digital camera.
 
hobbsyoyo said:
Honestly, if you can spare the extra money, I would keep your current plan. You can't readily anticipate future usage habits and more importantly, you can't anticipate how much the carriers will change future plans (for good, but usually, for ill). Keeping your plan will ensure you stay grandfathered-in against any future negative trends in your carriers plans.

If I were you, I'd start using your mobile internet more such as downloading podcasts while on the go and such.
Click to expand...

Oh, I can spare the money, easily ... but there's an opportunity cost to consider. The price difference is something like ... 6 more books a year
 
Cancel your home internet plan and live off the 6GB and whatever free internet connections you have access to. :p

I was paying $70 a month for 20GB of 4G LTE data but the price just went up a couple days ago to $90 a month, guess that's the price you pay for loosing the 2 year contracts =/
 
Canada, Fido is part of Rogers.
This is super-ironic. Since I started this thread, the house WiFi has been gremlined, and I've just been tethering to avoid any inconvenience. I'm less prone to watching video that normal, but can surf to my heart's content.
 
Wow I feel sad for you all.

In the UK I have 3's One Plan - truly unlimited data, 2000 mins, 5000 texts, £20 pm, tethering allowed.

And a week or two ago I got a text message saying '4G is now available in your area at no extra cost!', though I still don't have it yet, but I'm still dine with my 6 mbit download and 2 mbit up with no limits.

Its my primary internet connection on my PC too, amazing.
 
bhavv said:
Wow I feel sad for you all.

In the UK I have 3's One Plan - truly unlimited data, 2000 mins, 5000 texts, £20 pm, tethering allowed.

And a week or two ago I got a text message saying '4G is now available in your area at no extra cost!', though I still don't have it yet, but I'm still dine with my 6 mbit download and 2 mbit up with no limits.

Its my primary internet connection on my PC too, amazing.
Click to expand...

I did that for a bit while waiting for real internet to get hooked up, it was unbearably poorly performing.
 
I've gone down to 1 gig. I just don't go over unless I forget to turn back on my wireless when I'm at home (I turn it off to save battery) or if I need to tether for more than a few days. And then, I can just buy more data.
 
So here's a question, speaking of wifi and tethering, that I haven't found an answer to:

If my phone has the wifi on but I'm not downloading or uploading (besides the usual NSA backdoors, of course :scan:) how much power does the wifi use? And which data connection uses the least mW/mB: 3g, LTE, or wifi? :dunno:
 
Not much, I don't bother turning wifi off. I do recommend Pry-Fi for Android users though.

mW·h/MiB depends on phone and data rates. Rule of thumb wifi and LTE are similar and both better than 2G/3G. If one of wifi/LTE is significantly faster than the other it should be enough to become more efficient. http://anandtech.com/show/8169/the-lg-g3-review/3
 
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