How often can you hear from Internet users that they cannot decide on the choice of Internet option for themselves! Usually people do not understand how many gigabytes they will need approximately per month and which tariff plan to purchase. One of the most popular questions: “Is 1 GB of Internet a lot or a little?” Let's try to figure it out and find out what the Internet actually is. What is 1 GB enough for and how to save traffic? What determines the data transfer speed?
What weighs how much
In order to find out what you spend your traffic on every month, you first need to understand what a gigabyte is and how much it is, using examples:
A regular page depends on how overloaded this page is with photographs. If a regular text page weighs about 60-70 KB, then viewing a social network feed with a bunch of photos and gifs can take 5-10 MB. By the way, such social networks tend to update themselves, therefore, this will additionally consume traffic.
Listening to or downloading music again depends on the file format and duration. It will take you approximately 3 to 5 MB of traffic.
Watching a movie - depending on the quality, format, duration and compression, the size of the movie can vary from 8 to 15 GB. If you decide to download a DVD movie, you will have to sacrifice another 1.5 GB of traffic.
Online TV, streaming video and Skype - thanks to maximum compression, you can spend about 700 MB. In the case of Skype, everything depends on the camera resolution.
Everything else - regarding small chats, acq, correspondence on Skype, checking mail, you won’t need a lot of Internet (provided that they don’t send you huge files).
Streaming video
Streaming video is watching movies or videos online, which requires good Internet speed and preferably unlimited (at least large enough) mobile traffic.
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For fans of streaming video, 2 GB per month will most likely not be enough. Traffic consumption in this case depends on the length of the video and the selected resolution. To use up all 2 GB, it is enough to watch just a couple of videos in HD, in a very high and good quality format. At the same time, three five-minute videos a day in medium resolution (relatively low quality) can take up less than 100 megabytes. This means that the consumption of a package with 2 GB will take about 20 days, but only if you do not spend the Internet on anything else.
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Tip: If you want to watch videos from your smartphone, it is best to do so via Wi-Fi where the connection is free, for example, in public places. Download videos for offline viewing before leaving home if you have a landline Internet connection at home for a relatively small fee, and it should be an unlimited connection.
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If you often watch online broadcasts, conduct your own streams and do not want to limit your access to the Internet and traffic, the best option in this case is unlimited Internet, which you will have to pay for.
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How much Internet traffic per month does a smartphone need?
Let's say you would like to connect the Internet to your smartphone, and the platform of the phone itself does not matter. It can be either Android, iOS, Bada, or even such old-fashioned operating systems as Simbian and Java, in any case, regardless of whether you are currently using the Internet or not, the phone itself will update and check everything installed applications and programs, which means additional traffic.
Of course, you can turn off updates, switch to Wi-Fi whenever possible, not play online games, and if not necessary, turn off data transfer completely. Thus, you will significantly save your Internet, but why do you need a smartphone then? So, is 1 GB of mobile Internet a lot or a little? This is hardly enough. It’s better to purchase 1.5-2 GB, then you won’t have to think about saving.
Music
Streaming music has gained great popularity and involves playing a music file online. With apps like Spotify and Apple Music, there's no need to store your entire music collection on your smartphone. This is especially convenient if the device does not have a lot of storage.
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One track on streaming services weighs about 5 MB. This means that in an hour of listening to music you will use up about 80 MB of your paid data. If you are far from a music lover and listen to music no more than an hour a week, you may use about 700 MB in a month. But if listening takes more than an hour a day, using up 2 GB in a month is quite realistic.
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For example, I like to listen to online radio. Many radio stations provide a similar service. If you connect to an online broadcast, minimize all windows and tabs on your gadget, and turn off the screen (so that video advertising is not broadcast), then an hour of listening to the radio will also consume no more than 40-80 MB of prepaid data, or even less.
How much internet do you need for a tablet?
A tablet is essentially the same smartphone, only slightly larger in size. And since it has a large screen diagonal, therefore, there will be a little more transmitted (received) data. It turns out that everything that was recommended for smartphones also applies to tablets, only the Internet will be required 2-3 times more.
Under no circumstances is it recommended to use a basic tariff from an operator with megabyte pricing. Wild prices will empty your personal account in a matter of minutes. And secondly, when roaming, it is better to purchase a local SIM card, otherwise you risk falling into big debts in a couple of clicks.
Units of measurement information in detail
In the information world, it is not the usual decimal measurement system that is used, but a binary one. This means that one digit can take values not from 0 to 9, but from 0 to 1.
The simplest unit of measurement of information is 1 bit; it can be equal to 0 or 1. But this value is very small for the modern amount of data, so bits are rarely used. Bytes are most often used; 1 byte is equal to 8 bits and can take a value from 0 to 15 (hexadecimal number system). True, instead of numbers 10-15, letters from A to F are used.
But these volumes of data are small, so the familiar prefixes kilo- (thousand), mega-(million), giga-(billion) are used.
It is worth noting that in the information world, a kilobyte is not equal to 1000 bytes, but 1024. And if you want to know how many kilobytes are in a megabyte, then you will also get the number 1024. When asked how many megabytes are in a gigabyte, you will hear the same answer - 1024.
This is also determined by the peculiarity of the binary number system. If, when using tens, we obtain each new digit by multiplying by 10 (1, 10, 100, 1000, etc.), then in the binary system a new digit appears after multiplying by 2.
It looks like this:
2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024
A number consisting of 10 binary digits can only have 1024 values. This is more than 1000, but is closest to the usual prefix kilo-. Mega-, giga- and tera- are used in the same way.
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Cellular operators have already deployed their own 3G networks (and some have had them deployed for a long time and are operating successfully) and have decided on new tariff plans. As a rule, subscribers are offered packages from 0.5 GB to 4 GB of traffic (and in some cases even up to 8 GB). To answer the question whether this is a lot or a little for the owner of a mobile device, we carried out some measurements.
We took 1GB of traffic and tried to use it for the most popular tasks that were in demand by users. The result is this interesting infographic (see image below).
1 GB of traffic at good speed is not that much. Provided that it needs to be spread out over a month, this is practically nothing at all. Correspondence in instant messengers, social networks, mail, online navigation and sometimes on the Internet look up transport schedules, the address of a store or restaurant, several short videos a day (5 minutes each), 30-40 minutes of reading a feed on Facebook or another social network a day, 150-200 pages of web surfing, uploading 50-60 photos to social media. network, 30-40 minutes of Skype calls, 2-3 songs a day online and not in the best quality. Keep in mind that smartphones and tablets constantly update installed applications and the information they need (for example, weather, location data, etc.), which also eats up a certain amount of traffic. Perhaps, only by limiting yourself to such a set of services can you stretch 1 GB of traffic over the entire month. But all of the above can be done quite quickly. Well, you can completely forget about showing your child a cartoon on the Internet, or watching a match of your favorite team online, for example, with such a volume of traffic. There is a high probability that a full-length cartoon can be watched until about halfway through, and a football match, at best, until the start of the second half. If the average user does not need to watch videos, listen to music, update and download applications on a smartphone, communicate in instant messengers via voice and, especially, video calls, then perhaps the most economical ones will be able to last until the end of the month. And one cannot even dream of using 3G Internet as a replacement for home Internet with the daily use of a significant amount of information, with the exception of the tariffs of the CDMA operator or the national operator Kyivstar in its new unlimited tariff “Maximum Unlim” for 155 UAH/month.
If you are just such a user, then 1 GB per month is enough for you, but if you spend a lot of time on the Internet and use a large number of services that require an Internet connection, and also listen and watch a lot online or communicate on Skype with video calls, then It's worth considering a 3-5 GB/month tariff plan.
Below we give you an infographic of how many different types of mobile services can fit into 1GB of traffic. Please note that the diagram shows the traffic consumption of certain applications and services using the “or” logic, and not the “and” logic. This means 17 hours of navigation, or 257 songs online, or 16.5 hours of listening to the radio, or 50 hours on Facebook, or 500 high quality photos, etc.
How much traffic is needed for a netbook and laptop?
If everything is very clear with a phone and tablet, then with a laptop things are a little different. Still, the question sounded like this: “Is 1 GB of Internet a lot or a little?” Therefore, if you do not plan to use your laptop once every couple of days to check your email, then, of course, this will be very little.
If you pursue goals such as daily viewing of the news feed, downloading movies and music, online games, then you will undoubtedly need much more Internet, about 15-20 GB.
Social media
In order to save traffic, social networking applications compress media. Twitter and Facebook use less data than Instagram or VKontakte. This is due to the fact that images appear less frequently in the feeds of the first two services.
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So, it won’t take too much to quickly scroll through the Internet feed. But if you spend at least two hours on social networks every day, then you can spend 5 or 10 GB of data in a month.
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For those who use social networks no more than 5 hours a week (and do not listen to streaming music or watch YouTube), 1 GB is enough for a month of such work on the Internet.
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Advice: for those who like to post photos on social networks every day, it is better to switch to a tariff with 5-8 GB of data per month. For everyone else, 2 GB will be enough.
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How to save traffic
As we noted earlier, no matter what device you use, they all consume the Internet in one way or another without your knowledge. Sometimes even more than yourself. For example, updating Windows can use up to half of your precious traffic on your computer or laptop. Therefore, we advise you to disable all possible updates on both your laptop and smartphone. Perhaps you can leave only antiviruses.
But not only updates can eat up your traffic, this also applies to applications running in the background, for example, Skype, WhatsApp, mail, weather. If you don't really need them, you can disable these applications from time to time, which will significantly save megabytes.
Messengers
Messengers use very little data: even a 24/7 text-only conversation will take about 500 MB. Try to send videos, photos and voice notes less often, and then 2 GB per month will be enough.
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Advice: an economical package with two gigabytes of traffic per month for instant messengers will be enough if you limit sending and downloading media (videos, photos, gifs, etc.).
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Games (not online) and other applications
First, prohibit all software from updating over the mobile network, and only allow it to update over Wi-Fi. Updates can weigh 100 megabytes (MB) or more, and you won’t even notice how your mobile traffic is used up by itself. In fact, 500 MB per month is enough to use games and other applications that require an Internet connection from time to time.
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When I first got Internet on my smartphone, my monthly 3 GB traffic was used up in almost a couple of hours, to my great amazement. I just made my gadget a mobile Internet access point and connected my computer to this access point, which, happy to be connected to Wi-Fi, updated its entire Windows operating system. And I was left without mobile Internet for the whole month, since the update happened strictly on the May holidays, at the beginning of the month.
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The saddest thing for me was that I could no longer change the conditions for providing access to the Internet; I had to wait until the beginning of the next month.
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Conclusion: fans of offline games have nothing to worry about. For them, 2 GB per month will be enough for entertainment and to look up the road in the navigator. There will still be some time left for messengers and other activities. But playing online games on a mobile device will definitely require an unlimited Internet connection.
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So, the bottom line
Each user uses the Internet differently, so all calculations give only an approximate picture. And, nevertheless, we can say that most budget-conscious users will be satisfied with a tariff that includes 2 GB of mobile Internet.
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To save traffic, you need to:
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- listen to music offline;
- watch videos and update software only via Wi-Fi;
- do not send a lot of media files (videos, photos, gifs, audio) in messengers;
- use data saving mode in the browser and use mobile versions of sites.
As a last resort, if you realize that such an economical tariff plan is clearly not enough for you, you can always switch to a new tariff. Then you won’t have to choose what to do on your smartphone outside the home - post on Instagram or listen to your favorite music for half an hour.
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It is recommended to monitor your traffic usage. Almost all gadgets allow you to do this. But you must remember that the gadget counts traffic with some difference from the way the same traffic is counted by a mobile operator. Therefore, I usually recommend making some reserve, mentally adding 5-10 percent to the traffic that the gadget shows.
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Vote
I ask you to take part in the voting by choosing one option from among those proposed. Thank you!
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What does download speed depend on?
Every time you try to view a page on a website, when this page loads, files are downloaded from the hosting. In other words, the page loading speed is the speed at which it is downloaded from the hosting to the user’s browser.
A number of factors affect your speed, such as:
- Data volume.
- Internet speed provided by the operator.
- Hosting load.
Thus:
- A regular page on a 2G network will load in about 50 seconds, 3G - 1 second, and with 4G speed - instantly.
- A song is about 5 MB: at a speed of 2G - 8 minutes, 3G - 11 seconds, 4G - 4 seconds, 4G+ - instantly.
- A short video: 2G – 42 minutes, 3G – 1 minute, 4G – 13 seconds, 4G+ – 7 seconds.
- Movie (750 MB): 2G – 21 hours, 3G – 30 minutes, 4G – 7 minutes, 4G+ – 3 minutes.
- Movie in HD (1.5 GB): 2G - 42 hours, 3G - 1 hour, 4G - 14 minutes, 4G+ -6 minutes.
Let's summarize everything that was said above
In general, 1 GB of Internet is the minimum needed for a modern smartphone. It’s another matter if you have something very simple, say in Java or Simbian. But such phones are rather an exception to the rule and are gradually becoming a thing of the past. And applications on Android and iOS require a lot of traffic, and at good speed. So if you have the latest generation phone in your hands and want to take full advantage of all its advantages, you will have to buy more internet.
If you are wondering whether 1 Gb of Internet per month on a phone is enough and how much it will cost, first determine your needs, and then contact your operator for more detailed information about your tariff option.
Sometimes the Internet options provided by operators do not differ much in price, but they differ in the volume of traffic. So, for example, one tariff may cost only 50-100 rubles more than another, but you will get 2 times more Internet. Therefore, sometimes it is worthwhile to better study all the services provided by operators and, if possible, avoid pitfalls.
As for the loud advertising slogans about the supposedly “unlimited Internet”, in reality there is no unlimited Internet. One way or another, you will be provided with a certain amount of traffic, although it will be much more (however, the price will be higher). After you exhaust the gigabytes allocated to you, you will have to connect additional “Turbo buttons” or wait for the next debit. Today there is no tariff that would allow you to surf endlessly for a month, download movies and music, distribute Wi-Fi right and left, and not think about the consequences.
What tariff do I need?
Let's return to the main topic: how to choose a tariff? The answer to this question depends on two factors: who uses the home Internet and for what.
For what. If you only need email, social media and a browser, the minimum plan may be enough, but it's important to keep in mind that large amounts of information (such as mail) may be slow to process.
If you are a movie fan and picture quality is important to you, the slowest and cheapest tariff is not an option for you.
Here's how much connection speed some online activities require. When choosing a tariff, you can rely on this table.
Who uses it. If you live alone, work with email and social networks and sometimes watch videos on YouTube, the minimum tariff will be enough for you. Now it starts at providers from 20-30 Mbit/sec and costs 200-250 rubles/month.
If there are three or more active Internet users living in an apartment, one of whom is an avid gamer, another watches TV series in good quality, and the third downloads a lot of data to the computer, then the minimum tariff will not be limited. 20 Mbps will try to be evenly divided among all household members, and as a result, the connection will be slow for all three. To make it comfortable for everyone to use the Internet, if there are three or more active users, it is better to connect to a tariff of 100 Mbit/s.
Mobilization in price
Nobody in Saratov likes it when money is spent on unknown things. However, not only in Saratov and its environs. So, in any case, wasteful spending is not about mobile Internet. Let's take a detailed look at how to “put the Internet in grams” and how much to pay for it, what is included in operator fees, how long they last, and how much “internetization” of your smartphone will cost.
1. Mobile Internet is expensive. I already pay 300 rubles a month for calls and text messages. If you also pay for this Internet, you can go broke!
