PCWorld: Mobile Data Plans – Know Your Limit
The article includes analysis of how much of each type of data you can use each month with a given monthly data download limit. How many e-mails can you download with a 200 MB plan, for example? Or how many Word docs with a 1GB plan?
“With the advent of tiered pricing for wireless broadband service–and the eventual disappearance of unlimited data plans–it’s more important than ever to understand how much data you can pull down from the Web before reaching your plan limit and being liable for overage charges.
Earlier this year, AT&T and Verizon adopted tiered data pricing systems–AT&T in June and Verizon in October–and the rest of the industry is expected to follow. Lower tiers for smartphone data can have limits as low as 200 megabytes (MB) per month ($15/month, AT&T), while the upper tiers for tablets and mobile hotspots can offer as much as 10 gigabytes (GB) of data per month ($80/month, Verizon). When you take a close look at the data usage you’ve become accustomed to during the month, you might find that those caps–especially in the lower tiers–are easier to reach than you might think.”