Information Echo

I was lucky enough (if you consider it lucky compared to unlimited plans elsewhere in the world) to snag a 6-Gig/Month data plan for my iPhone late last summer. After years of struggling with exorbitant mobile data costs and foolish limitations, this was suddenly the “Holy Grail” of data plans. Add to that the fact that it’s a truly free data plan (including tethering) it has actually come in quite handy - while traveling we hook our Macbook to my iPhone and enjoy internet everywhere.

Unsurprisingly the data plan in question was discontinued months later and replaced by an 1-Gig plan for the same amount of money, but that’s a whole other story.

As the months have passed, and having recently upgraded to an iPhone 3G from my original iPhone 2G, I noticed my data consumption was climbing, but after actually resetting my data counter last week at the beginning of my billing cycle I was astounded to discover that I’m actually consuming about 200 megabytes per day.

I sat back and tried to figure out exactly where that amount of data was coming from and it quickly made sense.

Podcast Download: I start my day by downloading a podcast (over 3G) that I listen to daily. I used to download it at home and sync it to my iPhone when I was using my old (drastically slower) 2G iPhone, but with the new found blazing 3G speed, I found it more convenient to just download it on the fly in the morning. Total data: 40-50 Megs daily

VNC: I spend quite a lot of time with an active VNC connection to my iMac at home so that I can monitor a piece of software running there and provide input as required. It’s a long story, but suffice to say I really enjoy the power that VNC provides in allowing me to access my iMac as if I’m sitting in front of it. Total data: ~100 Megs daily

General surfing: The iPhone is a rich surfing experience as anyone who owns one knows. With fast 3G speeds it’s easy to burn a large amount of data very quickly with just plain surfing, catching up on blogs and such. Total data: 10-20 Megs Daily

Webcam: I have a security related IP webcam and various occasionally-updated images (weather, etc) that I monitor throughout the day. With the recent addition of the excellent iPhone application “Cam Viewer Lite” I’m now able to monitor them all in real time directly on my iPhone. It’s handy, but even with light usage it’s a large consumer of bandwidth (especially the realtime IP webcams) I’ve discovered. Total data: 20-30 Megs Daily

The remainder is a bit of data here and there - the weather app, the Facebook app, email, etc.

Quite a lot of my data consumption is purely discretionary and by no means necessary from a personal or work standpoint so I could easily lower it if I needed to, but I subscribe to the “use it if you’ve got it” viewpoint.

It wasn’t that long ago when it would have been technologically impossible or financially crippling to do what I’m doing now without hardly a second thought. Oh how times have changed for the better.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS