Java ME and Flash Lite expert in Forum Nokia Americas, Mountain View. Besides mobile technologies, interested in HCI and the use of technology in sports.
hartti | 05 April, 2007 03:41
When one has a mobile phone through one's employer, which also pays for the monhtly bill, it is easy to forget the cost of data (or the limitations in downloading data).
I was reading this report on Verizon having an unlimited EVDO data service which is effectively limited to 5 GB per month (anyone exceeding this amount could be kicked out of the service) and started wondering how much bandwidth I or any of my close colleagues use per month. And how much that data transfer would cost to us if we would pay that data transfer ourselves.
5 GB is about 200 megabytes per day (depending if you you want to check out the data amount per work day or all days). It is quite a lot for a mobile phone user (I guess), but still many people using this service to connect their laptop to the net might run out of data soon. At least I am getting enough emails and browse the Web enough that my monthly data transfer is way over this limit. Even without the occasional Youtube video sessions :-)
I tried to find out if AT&T (the wireless carrier I am now using) has any limitations in their unlimited data plans, but I was not able to find such limitations. Maybe I am not so expensive user of wireless data after all...