Technology is growing fast and ready for the fast growing internet speeds. More and more home gadgets are being manufactured with the ability to connect to the internet to bring more features to your living room. Smartphones are now becoming the largest internet consumers overtaking the computers. In fact, smartphones are now the new replacement of PCs (Personal Computers).

Data providers are realizing the benefits they would gain from providing data services and are investing heavily to deliver the service to you at the comport of your house. As a result, we see different data providers come up with new data tariffs and introduction of gadgets that will allow you tap their services at home. The question and reason why I’m writing this article is to find out how much does an average user need in terms of data per day or per month.

Data Usage

How much megabytes does it take to stream a video, download a photo or load a webpage? It’s easy to count how much text messages or phone calls one has made or received but it’s never easy to monitor how much data one has used. Even those modems and routers that have data traffic reports, most of them have a disclaimer stating the data usage report may vary with reports you get from the service provider. Meaning the report may not be accurate. This is due to different ways apps work when they are connecting to the internet. I’m going to base my research on two big companies in the US, AT&T and Verizon. Streaming music according to Verizon’s calculator eats about a megabyte per minute while according to AT&T’s tool, it estimates that at half a megabyte. We find varying values also when you monitor usage of a streaming video or downloading photos via a smartphone. The different values provided by the two companies above cannot be considered as wrong because the technology involved in streaming content online is complicated. Let us look at what complicates the data usage maths.

To give a better look, I’m going to use YouTube as an example. YouTube will give a higher resolution video if it detects the connection you’re operating on best suites to download higher graphics. That’s to say, if you’re on a 4G or a 50mbps connection, YouTube will detect that and give a 720p or 1080p HD video quality if available. Another user streaming the same video on a 2G or 2mbps connection will probably get a 480p quality or lower. Definitely the consumption of the two users differ a lot. Same thing happens for music streaming from Spotify. If you’re streaming a radio service from Spotify with “extreme quality” option enabled, you’ll be chewing about a megabyte per minute while “high quality” option would consume merely half a megabyte per minute. Remember while you’re running this streams, your device is also running other background checks for app updates and the like. I believe now you can see why it’s hard to foresee how much data you’ll need while shopping for the service. However, I have a few recommendations I would suggest to help you shop for the best package for your needs.

What data connection suites your needs? I will categorize data users into 3; heavy users, medium users and moderate (low) users.

Heavy Users

If you’re a heavy user, you will definitely need the highest and best unlimited package you can get in your market. A heavy user would stream unlimited number of videos and music in a day. Heavy web browsing, heavy downloads and uploads. Such would rate in speeds of about 20 mbps to 50mbps dedicated or even higher.

Medium Users

If you’re a medium user, you would also fetch for an unlimited connection that best suites your needs. Maybe the best medium package you can get in your market. I would define a medium user as one who streams videos and music but moderately. Heavy web browsing with fewer downloads and uploads as compared to a heavy user. Such would need speeds of about 5 mbps to 20 mbps dedicated connections.

Moderate Users

A moderate user would go for a shared unlimited speeds of up to 10 mbps or dedicated speeds of 2 mbps. Moderate users would do medium web browsing (check emails, social media, and chats). Such speeds can also do video streaming but quite conservatively. Such users can also go for limited connections, which could be cheaper and affordable to many users. Internet via a 3G modem would suffice such a user or tethering your smart phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Unforeseen Terms

Bad news is that, most unlimited packages are also limited in one way or the other. You’ll need to read their terms of usage to understand what restrictions you have. Some packages apply fair usage policy (FUP), which limit how much you can consume in a day, week or month. You may get an unlimited connection with a FUP that doesn’t allow you to exceed 20GB in a month or 2GB in a day just to give some examples. With such packages, you’ll still need to be careful not to exceed the FUP limits. Even though you may continue to use internet after exhausting your data, most service providers will lower your speeds for the remaining period prior to your package expiry.