How much inclusive data allowance do I need for a mobile phone?

[LazyBones]

I phoned O2 this morning to give notice in readiness for moving to T-Mobile where I was going for a Web'n'walk tariff which allowed 1GB of data a month as O2's rates seemed much pricier than T-Mobile.

But O2 disproved the "brand new customers only" rule by offering me a far better deal than I'm on at the moment - £10pm for 100 minutes, 100 texts, 2MB of data and itemised billing on a 12 month deal with a fair range of free phones. A similar 18 month deal on T-Mobile but with a gig of data would cost £24pm.

Obviously 2MB is a lot less than 1GB, but how much do I need for a few e-mails and, say, 30-60 minutes of web per day if I don't get involved in things like podcasts and downloads?

O2 reckoned that 1MB should be fine so 2MB would be plenty. If I blow the limit each meg is going to cost £2.35 which is obviously a big jump.

 

[3T3L1]

O2 reckoned that 1MB should be fine so 2MB would be plenty. If I blow the limit each meg is going to cost £2.35 which is obviously a big jump.

But even if you go over by a couple of meg a month, you would be saving compared to the T-Mobile package, and if you don't then you'll be quids in! I think you can get a "bolt on" for cheaper data access if you don't mind adding that to your bill per month

Not sure how much you would need though, I had a free 20 Mb trial in my first month and didn't exceed that through daily surfing and mail checking before I got my broadband back up. Think 2 Mb a month will be tough to stick to if you intend to use it every day though - even if you turn the pictures off on web pages.

 

[LazyBones]

Thanks for that - it was sort of what I expected. As you say, even if I end up paying a bit extra if I blow the limit it could still be a lot cheaper than the other options.

 

[londonguy1973]

id say 2mb isnt gonna be enough if your planning on using it a bit. Depending on the pages your looking at 1mb could be between 5-25 pages. Is it just wap or proper internet your gonna be using? full internet pages are quite a lot bigger than wap ones.

by the way 120 mins, 100 texts and unlimited data is £22.50 on t-mobile if you do it in their shops at the moment. But it is an 18 month contract so up to you.

 

[3T3L1]

Hope this isn't too late, but I've found a way of checking my data allowance from my K800i...

In all of my total internet sessions (total time 1:35:19), I have sent 622984 B and received 2560164 B.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I assume they only charge for received data, and a "B" is a "byte".

Assuming there are approx 1000 B in a Kb and 1000 Kb in 1 Mb, I reckon I've used approx 2560 Kb (ie about 2 Mb) in using the internet for 1 h 35 min over approximately 2 month. No downloading in that time, just looking at e-mail (subjects and senders mainly) and a few web pages (albeit with pictures on until I realised how to turn them off).

Thus, I think my earlier post of "yeah, 2 Mb will be easily enough" may be a bit out - if you're going to use it every day, think you will need a lot more.

That's assuming my calculations are right...HTH

 

[LazyBones]

Thanks for the feedback. I had come to the conclusion that I didn't NEED the data side of things and took O2 up on their offer.

However the phone hadn't arrived after a week and it turned out that they hadn't processed the order. I won't bore you with the details of their rubbish customer service and the systems being down at the call centre most of the weekend so I have now written to give notice.

I'm off to T-Mobile on the Flext deal that londonguy mentioned, with the first 3 months of web'n'walk free too.

A work colleague went onto web'n'walk recently and reckons he absolutely hammered it in the first month, and used 90MB.