4G router data usage

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ATC110

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Having recently started using a 4G router with a prepay SIM as the sole provision of home internet, how much daily data should it use based upon the following:

Three devices connected -Apple Watch, MacBook Pro and iPhone
Usage mainly consisting of browsing the web, email, WhatsApp messaging and Facebook
No full video streaming rather occasional clips
No gaming

The router is a used one but the username and password have been changed and the WIFI password is in use.

I bought a 30GB data sim and have used that in 14 days so will have to change the plan to unlimited.

Automatic software, app updates and iCloud backups are enabled but in practice it's only the iPhone using these.

Is this usage considered excessive?

TIA
 
With that usage pattern if you budget for 3 Gb a day you should be fine.
(You can get 100 Gb a month with a 48.ie (Three network) SIM or 120 Gb a month with a GoMo (eir network) SIM. Both would suit your purposes and are excellent value for money.)
 
Shirazman said:
With that usage pattern if you budget for 3 Gb a day you should be fine.
(You can get 100 Gb a month with a 48.ie (Three network) SIM or 120 Gb a month with a GoMo (eir network) SIM. Both would suit your purposes and are excellent value for money.)
Click to expand...
Thank you-I'm aware of those packages.
My question is more about whether the usage is excessive - any articles I've read seem to point towards usage much less than this
 
ATC110 said:
Thank you-I'm aware of those packages.
My question is more about whether the usage is excessive - any articles I've read seem to point towards usage much less than this
Click to expand...

I answered that too - but would add that it's one of these 'how long is a piece of string' questions! For example, I'm using Sky Go a lot more in the autumn than I did in the summer, so my daily usage is now much higher! Even so, I'm finding it hard to exceed my 120 Gb monthly limit!
 
2GB a day is a lot if there is no video streaming.

Did the MacBook or iPhone do an OS update? That can use up a lot.
 
On a mobile network, both data coming down and going up is counted towards the limit. If you are doing backups then you will be sending a lot of data to the cloud and this will be counted towards your allowance. It wouldn't be counted on cable or landline broadband but it is on mobile.
 
With the trend for having low-capacity SSD storage in devices these days, the manufacturers and service sellers will try to flog their cloud services as part of the device / OS purchase. It's much cheaper and more convenient to use local, hard-ware attached storage for backup, e.g. a USB-connected hard drive. Apple's excellent built-in Time Machine can work this way with zero network charges or overhead. It's quicker to copy backup data over a 0.5 metre Thunderbolt or USB cable than over a mobile network.

It is unnecessary to back up your iPhone to iCloud, Dropzone or any other cloud "solution"; use the Finder to back it up locally to the MacBook

The first suggestion is to buy an external HDD to attach to the MacBook, the iPhone backups will in turn be automatically backed up to the external HDD.

Unless the software updates are massive (Mac OS Monterey for example) and unnecessarily frequent (FB & FB Messanger happen a couple of times per week each IME) they shouldn't be too demanding on your network bandwidth allocation and iOS & Watch OS updates are tiny by comparison.

What sort of data are you backing up? Are they:
  • Photos, other big images, videos, music, big data-bases, software development source files and executables, etc. or are they
  • Word-processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations or other run-of-the-mill office or business admin files?
If the former, store them locally, if the latter, store them in iCloud.

As stated above, how long is a piece of string? Give us an idea of data types, MacBook strage, etc. and we'll tailor a solution for you.
 
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