With this morning’s news of AT&T’s data plan shake-up, many iPhone-using readers are outraged. 2GB to the average nerd does not sound like much, and many smartphone owners consider Ars av among the heaviest data consumers. However, as users began checking their own data usage on AT&T’s website, they began to see that not only were they almost never going over the 2GB limit in a month, they might even be able to reduce it to the new 200MB monthly limit.
Since we on Ars staff believe that AT & T’s new tiers will provide savings for most users, we decided to put up or close up with pictures of our own data usage since November 2009. As you can see from the image below, most of us hover around an average of 80MB to 300MB per month on our phones alone, although those numbers tend to go up and down depending on certain factors (like when and how often we travel).
Some notes to keep in mind: Editor-in-Chief Ken Fisher travels extensively among us, and Editor-in-Chief Nate Anderson leave his house uses your phone the least. I’m the only employee who uses the original iPhone that uses EDGE (although I don’t use WiFi because it’s too flaky for me), while everyone else is scattered between the iPhone 3G and 3GS. Finally, all of these are based on our phone usage only, no pairing. Without further ado:
You check your data usage by logging into your account attwireless.com and finding a link on the landing page that says “View Past Data Usage.” If you have more than one line on your account, the site will show you a drop-down where you can switch between them.
Feel free to post your charts in the comments below, but you can also vote in our poll to indicate where your monthly data usage is:
On average, how much data do you use per month on your phone alone?Product inspection