Cellular data speed

Gerhardt

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Gerhardt
So my daughter keeps blasting through our family plan data limits. She's cost us an average of an extra $75 each of the last 3 months because AT&T charges $15/G after the first 16G. It turns out that they have a plan for the same price with unlimited data but the catch is that the speed is capped at 128kbps. The plan I have now is 3mbps.

I use my iPad quite a bit. Under the unlimited plan would I find a noticeable change on the iPad for normal browsing? Would I notice a change in things like watching YouTube videos? (I don't really care if my daughter finds any noticeable changes, but I don't want bogged down)
 
So my daughter keeps blasting through our family plan data limits. She's cost us an average of an extra $75 each of the last 3 months because AT&T charges $15/G after the first 16G. It turns out that they have a plan for the same price with unlimited data but the catch is that the speed is capped at 128kbps. The plan I have now is 3mbps.

I use my iPad quite a bit. Under the unlimited plan would I find a noticeable change on the iPad for normal browsing? Would I notice a change in things like watching YouTube videos? (I don't really care if my daughter finds any noticeable changes, but I don't want bogged down)
Yes, it is noticeable. I ran out of data while on vacation (iPhone GPS mostly) and went over my data limit. At this time, my plan was set up to reduce data speeds if I were to inadvertently go over, to prevent it from happening a 2nd time. It was verrrrry slow. Internet usage was basically nil and Maps on iPhone were barely usable. I called Verizon and had them deactivate this on my plan so I could use my phone for the remainder of the trip.

I don't know what Verizon capped the data speed at during this, but I would imagine it was close to what AT&T will do.

My recommendation for you would be to determine what is causing your daughter to run the data over its limit. (Videos, music streaming etc.) use a high amount of data. Make sure that she is using Wi-fi whenever practicable.
 
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My AT&T data is unlimited but once we use our monthly high speed data limit, it gets throttled to a much lower speed. No charge though for the excess but it is much slower. I forget the speeds.
 
Yes, the throttled speed is very slow by today's standards. 128K is a 1990's ISDN line. You'll definitely notice it.

Most carriers have a feature where you can ask them to throttle or cut off kids early at some pre-specified data limit. Worth checking if AT&T offers it. If she runs out of data a week early and cuts herself completely off or throttles herself, maybe she'll "get it" without annoying mom and dad who still have data to use.

I'm surprised your current plan has a rate limit at 3Mb/s on AT&T. They usually don't throttle anything speed-wise prior to the cap as long as the device will do it, other than phones sold via pre-pay, special deals through big boxes like WalMart, or via their subsidiary, Cricket.
 
Yeah you'll notice, I get 40-70+ mbps (9ish MBps) and I can tell when it spikes below 30 mbps or when latency goes over 100ms but then again i'm not a typical user. On sprint so data caps aren't a thing i've used over 100GB before and they haven't said anything.
 
Do they have a way to cap her data usage? We hound the kids to use wifi and tell them they get to pay for overages.
 
She blows through our family data limit (16G) within the first few days of each month. I can turn her data off, but I can't throttle it. She's 18 though and needs the GPS feature just to find her way home most days. As for having her pay for it, she's a lot like her mom. Money means nothing to her. She's oblivious to it. If I told her she owed me $500/mo for data usage she'd be "okay" and not give it a second thought. But she's in college and works just a few hours a week so I pay for her cell.
 
She blows through our family data limit (16G) within the first few days of each month. I can turn her data off, but I can't throttle it. She's 18 though and needs the GPS feature just to find her way home most days. As for having her pay for it, she's a lot like her mom. Money means nothing to her. She's oblivious to it. If I told her she owed me $500/mo for data usage she'd be "okay" and not give it a second thought. But she's in college and works just a few hours a week so I pay for her cell.

How the hell is she doing that? Watching Netflix on 4G? Talk some sense into her.
 
How the hell is she doing that? Watching Netflix on 4G? Talk some sense into her.
I use the GPS on my phone for at least two hours every weekday for navigation, and don't even use 1GB over a month. If that's all she needs it for, cap her at 1GB.

Or perhaps buy her a 3G phone....
 
You'll notice a difference. Big difference.

Look into switching to Tmobile. AT&T plans are pretty expensive. If Tmobile works in your area, you can put her on the unlimited data / talk / text plan, and add a second line for $100 a month. Maybe use that for your iPad, or better yet, move a phone over and just use Tmobile's service to tether your iPad from. Works great for me.
 
Wants vs needs. When each of our kids went off to college, we put them on their own plan and gave them a stipend of X dollars per month to cover the cell phone bill. If they went over, they had to cover it.

We told them they were old enough to make choices about their lives, so they were old enough to be financially responsible for the choices they made.

They didn't like having to learn how to do this, but now recognize how valuable this lesson was.
 
So my daughter keeps blasting through our family plan data limits. She's cost us an average of an extra $75 each of the last 3 months because AT&T charges $15/G after the first 16G. It turns out that they have a plan for the same price with unlimited data but the catch is that the speed is capped at 128kbps. The plan I have now is 3mbps.

I use my iPad quite a bit. Under the unlimited plan would I find a noticeable change on the iPad for normal browsing? Would I notice a change in things like watching YouTube videos? (I don't really care if my daughter finds any noticeable changes, but I don't want bogged down)

I could be wrong, but I believe the 128kbps speed only goes into effect when you reach 20GB, and that is per phone. So as soon as any phone on the plan hits 20G, it will slow down. Below that it is the faster speed. That is how I understood it when I recently switched to AT&T....although I don't have unlimited data but am thinking about it. Yeah it is amazing the data the kids use. My 14yr old has a 5-7GB/month allotment and I usually have to turn his data off 10 days in cause he's already there.
 
She blows through our family data limit (16G) within the first few days of each month. I can turn her data off, but I can't throttle it. She's 18 though and needs the GPS feature just to find her way home most days. As for having her pay for it, she's a lot like her mom. Money means nothing to her. She's oblivious to it. If I told her she owed me $500/mo for data usage she'd be "okay" and not give it a second thought. But she's in college and works just a few hours a week so I pay for her cell.
Hey Gerhardt, let me give you some advice . . .
Nah, never mind. There is a reason I never had kids. Laws on raising them are too restrictive.
 
She's 18. Not going to happen.

Tell her to buy her own plan then.

We had a shared plan on Verizon and if we went over I made the kid that went over pay or I turn off their phone their choice. They always paid. BTW my kids are 20 and 23.

We are now on Cricket wireless we each get 3GB if they go over it is throttled but no additional cost. So if they run out they run out and I don't care. 5 phones (2 kids, 2 parents and the home phone) cost me exactly $100 a month with 3GB each phone (more data than we had on Verizon). In fairness Cricket is reduced speed I think it is max 8Mbs on 4G LTE plenty fast enough.
 
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As others have said, GPS navigation is unlikely to be the culprit in high data usage. Streaming video will chew through data in no time.

AT&T's MobileShare Advantage plan throttling is usable for light web browsing and certainly for GPS navigation, but it is noticeable. Depending on how long you've been an AT&T customer, you may be able to twist their arm for a better MobileShare Value plan. They will try just about everything to force you into the new Advantage plans because when they do, your device fees go up (which is nothing but a huge money grab) and then they won't let you back on a MobileShare Value plan without a fight.

I was convinced to go to the Advantage plan with the promise that I would see a slight reduction in my bill. Not only did my bill go up (due to the increased device fees) but I was getting less full-rate data. When I called to complain, they told me I couldn't switch back to my previous plan because it "is no longer in the system." Threatening to cancel did not help. Eventually, after 50 minutes (!) of negotiation, they "found" an upgraded Value plan in the system and moved me to that. It costs me slightly more per month, but I get 3 GBs of additional full-rate data, and Rollover Data as well.

If you are considering a switch to the Advantage plans, be sure that's where you want to stay.

I was a Verizon customer for many years prior to AT&T, and was subjected to the same kind of nonsense. In fact, I think that Verizon wrote the book on it. I've had better customer service with AT&T up until recently, but I think that they are becoming somewhat immune to the customer threat to switch carriers.


JKG


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So my daughter keeps blasting through our family plan data limits. She's cost us an average of an extra $75 each of the last 3 months because AT&T charges $15/G after the first 16G. It turns out that they have a plan for the same price with unlimited data but the catch is that the speed is capped at 128kbps. The plan I have now is 3mbps.

I use my iPad quite a bit. Under the unlimited plan would I find a noticeable change on the iPad for normal browsing? Would I notice a change in things like watching YouTube videos? (I don't really care if my daughter finds any noticeable changes, but I don't want bogged down)
16GB is a lot of data, that is like 16 one hour HD tv shows, about 40 ripped CD albums uncompressed, 2500+ mp3 songs, I don't see how she is using that in days on a phone. Maybe her phone is hacked and is acting as a server for some bit torrent network(I made that up, it could be a thing I guess).
 
You'll notice a difference. Big difference.

Look into switching to Tmobile. AT&T plans are pretty expensive. If Tmobile works in your area, you can put her on the unlimited data / talk / text plan, and add a second line for $100 a month. Maybe use that for your iPad, or better yet, move a phone over and just use Tmobile's service to tether your iPad from. Works great for me.

The problem with Tmo is that they only sell unlimited now. My Tmo family plan is 5 phones(2.5G each after that slow to a crawl) at total of about $120. With unlimited, that's 180. But, i think they are running a promo. 3rd line free.. so 3 lines for 100$ unlimited is not bad.
 
We have unlimited and it's slow, but it works. Idk how the hell he does it, but my little brother has used 52.8GB with 11 days left in this billing period...
 
You'll notice a difference. Big difference.

Look into switching to Tmobile. AT&T plans are pretty expensive. If Tmobile works in your area, you can put her on the unlimited data / talk / text plan, and add a second line for $100 a month. Maybe use that for your iPad, or better yet, move a phone over and just use Tmobile's service to tether your iPad from. Works great for me.
I second TMobile. Switched from Verizon and haven't looked back. Cheaper, better coverage in my area, and no data caps. You get throttled to 3G when going over data cap. Not great but no overage fees.

Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk
 
I'd go with the "here's your cheap flip phone and a AAA membership so you can get all the maps you want" method. The GPS use shouldn't cause an issue, though the satellite map view feature should be off when it isn't absolutely needed.

Seriously, video is the only thing that can cause that kind of data use. She needs to learn that video is for WiFi use only, or restricted to like 10 minutes a day. The phone might have some settings, or maybe you can get an app, that would give a warning playing videos when not on WiFi.

Time for some tough love.
 
Dude you have problems we can't help you with.
Agreed. I can't possibly see how she'd go through that much data in 10 days unless she's just streaming video constantly. If that's the case, then tell her to stop. If she doesn't stop it, she gets the phone cancelled or moved to a phone with limited internet capability. If she wants more, she can pay for it. Switching over to a WiFi connection when available can't be that difficult, either.
 
Make her pay for the overages, especially if she's working. Get her to use wi-fi whenever possible for streaming. My daughter once ran up $350 in data overages (in one month!) because she "thought" she was on wi-fi. She paid for it and learned a good lesson.
 
AT&T now offers unlimited data, I just switched! Even costs less money than my previous plan!
 
She blows through our family data limit (16G) within the first few days of each month. I can turn her data off, but I can't throttle it. She's 18 though and needs the GPS feature just to find her way home most days. As for having her pay for it, she's a lot like her mom. Money means nothing to her. She's oblivious to it. If I told her she owed me $500/mo for data usage she'd be "okay" and not give it a second thought. But she's in college and works just a few hours a week so I pay for her cell.
There's going to come a time when she's gonna have to learn the value of money, and it sounds like that time is now!

As soon as you turn the tables and make her pay for her overage fee's, she won't think that 'money means nothing.' There's ways to fix this..
 
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The att unlimited plan is 20gb PER DEVICE then that device is slowed to stupid slow speeds. I am a data hog and don't get through 20GB in a month with using wifi when available.
If your daughter can't keep under 20gb she probably needs to spend less time on her phone...
 
I'd give her a choice. Tell her that you'll pay for her phone or for her college but that you aren't going to pay for both.
 
She blows through our family data limit (16G) within the first few days of each month. I can turn her data off, but I can't throttle it. She's 18 though and needs the GPS feature just to find her way home most days. As for having her pay for it, she's a lot like her mom. Money means nothing to her. She's oblivious to it. If I told her she owed me $500/mo for data usage she'd be "okay" and not give it a second thought. But she's in college and works just a few hours a week so I pay for her cell.

I seriously doubt it's the navigation that's causing the problem.

If it is, however, consider buying the TomTom Go Mobile app and downloading the maps onto the phone over WiFi. Then it uses almost no data at all while navigating. All it downloads is traffic information and the like, which is trivial (and which I believe can be turned off).

Again, though, I doubt it's the navigation. But if it is, consider TomTom.

I have an AT&T prepaid plan. I get 6 GB of data at high speed, and unlimited at whatever speed they throttle it to should I ever bust that cap (which hasn't happened yet). It costs me $40.00 / month with auto-pay. I use the TomTom app for everything except local trips. Even if I know the way, the traffic information is helpful. I've never used more than 500 MB of data in a month.

Rich
 
I'm not sure how anyone could blow through 16GB in a few days. When I am at my alternate residence I use the data on my phone or iPad to tether a computer. Even though I am not careful about what I download (I update programs and apps that way), I don't seem to use more than about 10GB every week or two.
 
I just can't even imagine a pilot's kid who hasn't been TAUGHT how to navigate their own hometown without a GPS, let alone the budgetary and responsibility problems in the story. It's not like she's a long haul trucker looking for a customer delivery address. Haha.

(Talk about children of the magenta line... holy crap...)

No flipping way the GPS sucks down that much data. Not possible.

Gerhardt, I feel for you man, but you've got to get control of that crap.

PIC. You. Your wallet. Not hers. Fly the wallet. Turn off the autopilot. LOL. :)
 
I'm with what I think is the majority here: You don't have an AT&T problem, you have a daughter problem. You are doing her great harm by enabling this behavior. She (or she and you) will suffer for it later in life.

And, yes, we had kids so BTDT.

Regarding navigation, if she wants to use her phone to navigate have her buy Copilot (https://copilotgps.com/). All maps are stored on the phone. Once you download the maps using a wifi connection, you don't need any data access at all.
 
You can download Google Maps for offline use too, for free.
I knew that GM would download pieces of maps. Can one now download the whole country and not need a data connection going forward? That's the way Copilot works; I've been using in for several years and not paying attention to possible alternatives.
 
It's the videos. Both you and she should be on WiFi when streaming whenever possible. Where is she living? If it is a dorm or apartment and she doesn't have good internet that should be fixed. Likewise your iPad (and everyone in your house) should be going through your home's WiFi when looking at YouTube videos or streaming shows. Make sure she knows what her phone is connecting through. It should be a WiFi outside the device, going through your internet plan, not the phone (or iPad's) own internal "hotspot".

You might be able to disable the hotspot feature through the phone's plan, I know I pay extra for the ability to use my phone as a hotspot. I use it when staying at hotels that have slow internet connections, especially in the evening when a lot of guests are using it at once. I also use it if I access bank accounts while I am at hotels or other public places that do not have security encryption on their WiFis. When I visited Mom and she had no internet at her house, I used it to stream Netflix and I'd go over my data, but it was worth the $15 or $30 once or twice a year, rather than increase the data plan and pay more each month.

Under no circumstances accept slower speed.

As for dealing with her, you're going to have to sit down with her and go over how her devices are connecting and make sure she understands the cost consequences. The "hotspot" setting needs to be OFF most all the time. It's possible she is falling asleep watching shows and they're running for hours (I do that!) If she is binge watching, that can be a problem, akin to gaming addiction or other massive wastes of time. She might also be texting a lot; there are ways to set your phone to use WiFi instead of data for some text messages. Also go into all the applications settings on the phone and turn off the ones she isn't using, and turn off WiFi assist. (WiFi assist means the phone, if on WiFi, will bump over to data if it thinks the WiFi connection is flaky.)

I don't expect she will have any interest in learning all these things though unless you make her personally responsible for the data cost which won't happen until you kick her off your plan and make her get her own. For us, the time was right when they got boyfriends. Then they wanted to get on plans with their guy, and so another piece of the umbilical cord is cut. Bittersweet, that. Enjoy her needing you while it lasts. :)

If she knows she is using the data for streaming because of slow internet performance, yet upgrading the internet will cost money, you pay one way or the other for more/faster data, that's just reality and if you want to maximize the use of technology, we have to bite the bullet. Personally I won't settle for less than 50 Mbps download these days. If you don't have that already in your area, your ISP should be working on it; I'd say something if they aren't.
 
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I knew that GM would download pieces of maps. Can one now download the whole country and not need a data connection going forward? That's the way Copilot works; I've been using in for several years and not paying attention to possible alternatives.

You're limited by how much memory in your phone you want to commit to the maps. The do expire, and you get a prompt to update before they expire. I still find myself driving in remote places in CA that have marginal if any cell coverage, so I do the offline maps thing when I think it may be useful.
 
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