PeopleTalentLink

Time to face the music.

These companies are here to make money. That is priority numero uno. Good customer support, good prices, and good plans only exist to show a profit.

Companies used to provide unlimited plans until they weren't making as much (read: we downloaded an excessive amount of). That led the industries to generate the popular structure of:

Basic Plans - 50 Megabytes (MB) or less
'Average' Plans - 5 Gigabytes (GB)AC
Unlimited Plans
Okay, a lot of people get what unlimited means, but what on earth is 50 MB or 5 GB?
It's not like cell phone companies where one can count minutes. We know what minutes are. We all read the time, at all times!

Tell someone you will be there in 5 minutes plus they get that. Tell 'em you're exceeding your usage cap in the next 10 Megabytes and expect the "lost in space" look.

Today we will demystify all of the jargon. I'll walk you through:

You skill with 50 MB of data
You skill with 5 GB of data
What you can't do with unlimited data
How to pick brilliantly select a plan to avoid the fret of using an excessive amount of bandwidth.
Basic Plans
They're well, pretty basic. If you are not careful, you'll blaze through the 50 MB faster than Michael Phelps in water at the Olympics. It's not a lot. Does that mean not to get it? Not necessarily.
An efficiency plan could work in the event that you only check email or browse the web. Large files become questionable. Definitely watch out for windows update. Gigabyte b450 aorus pro could be 100 MB or more. Very last thing you need would be to get slapped with a gazillion dollar bill and all you did was restart your personal computer. Thanks Microsoft!
Downloading movies or music is merely out the question. The common album is approximately 80 MB while movies are 700 MB at best. Of course, this leads us to elusive questions like "What's this is of life?" and...
"Man, so what can 50 MB get me?"

Nielsen-netratings.com says the common U.S. websurfer loads 1,500+ web pages per month. Popular webpages can be junked up with ads so each one of these accounts for 100-200KB of data downloaded.

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- CNN.com is 93kb while Google is really a mere 6 kb -
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This means that typically, an average user will download over 20MB of data just doing 'routine' web surfing. That however, doesn't include email you may download using desktop clients like Outlook.
The issue isn't so much the e-mail here, but spam. When possible, try to avoid using Outlook to download all your email. Try a web-based email service like Gmail or Yahoo. This way, if you do get spam, it's in a folder you do not download (read: you pay for it).

Here's a table that summarizes what we've spoken about so far:

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Activity/Download | File Size | # of that time period before you hit 50 MB
1 email | 10 KB | 5,000
1 webpage visit to CNN | ~100 KB | 512
1 downloaded song from iTunes | 4 MB | 13
1 typical 3 minute video on YouTube/Google | 5 MB | 10
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So, just need email? Then you can certainly get a basic plan. If not, then maybe you need to consider:

5 Gigabyte Plans
I'll give it for you straight. A 5 GB plan will cover most people's needs. It isn't for power users. Now, how can you figure out if you're regular or a power user? Consider these questions:

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Questions | Average User | Power User
Use the internet more than 3 hrs/day? | No | Yes
Will an aircard be your primary connection? | No | Yes
Do you download movies or music regularly? | No | Yes
Can you stream movies/music regularly? | No | Yes
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Answered yes to more than 1 of these questions? Then you're probably an electrical user and should have a look at an unlimited plan. Not sure? Check out:

What can 5 Gigabytes get me?

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Activity/Download | File Size | # of times before you hit 50 MB
1 email | 10 KB | 500,000 times
1 webpage visit to CNN.com | 100 KB | 5,242 times
1 downloaded song from iTunes | 4 MB | 1,250 times
1 typical 3 minute video on YouTube/Google | 5 MB | 1,000 times
one hour of 56k audio stream | 25 MB | 200 hrs
1 typical 5 minute video on iTunes | 30 MB | 167 times
1 hour of video stream or 2-way video chat | 52 MB | 97 hrs
1 typical 45-minute TV show from iTunes | 200 MB | 25 times
1 Full-length (2 hours) movie download | 1.5 GB | three times
1 entire DVD disk image | 4.5 GB | 1 time
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Unlimited Plans

Just the truth that you're scanning this part probably means you might need this plan.
Whether you're on the go from airport to airport, building webpages or downloading movies and music, you stay connected. You're a power user through and through.

Mobile Broadband providers may tremble at the mention of your name. Nothing else but unlimited will suffice. In the event that's you, there are only a handful of carriers offering unlimited mobile broadband. See the end of this article for to purchase them.

While the plan may be unlimited, 'prohibited' uses will get you banned by your provider. Those include:

Always on connections such as for example P2P, BitTorrent, server devices
Spam
Auto-responders that generate 'excessive' traffic
Any form of hacking
Think of it in this manner. They just don't want you to suck up all of the internet for yourself as an industrial vacuum. Though it may be fun, it'd be selfish. Besides that, you should be fine.

So, to recap on which we covered:

Basic plans are great for browsing the web and checking email
Average (or 5 GB) plans work well for most people
Unlimited plans are for power users who make an online search 'intensively'
Don't use mobile broadband for 'questionable' activities (If you do, I 'didn't see no thin!')
Now guess what happens each plan will get you. Heck, you probably already know which one you'll get.
Hold up though.

What if you obtain it and it's not working out for you personally? Or, You've already first got it and you realized that it is not for you personally? It'd really bite to be stuck for 2 2 years paying for something you don't like.