Stop Data overages:9 Tips to Help Manage Cellular Data

 While some cell phone companies do offer unlimited data, there are still a lot of them that don’t.  Even if you have unlimited data, it is often the case, your provider will slow down your data after you use a certain amount. This could cause certain things like streaming video to not work properly. In these cases, it is still beneficial to manage your data to insure you have a high speed connection at all times. If you have a limited data plan, you are more than likely well aware data is measured in Gigabytes, (abbreviated GB). However; you may not know how much a GB of data is, or how much data certain things take.

For example; you may wonder, how much data a minute of video or a web page uses. To put it simply, there is no easy answer as to how much data some things take. The amount of data different things use can vary dramatically. It is easy to find estimates on how much data things take, but, this information is not as helpful as you might think. As different sources, could have very different estimates. 

To save on your data, it is helpful to know how much data some things take compared to other things.  Instant messaging and email take very small amounts of data. You are very unlikely to make a dent in your data with email and messaging. Web pages use more data than messaging and email.  Non-text content on web pages (i.e. banner ads, pictures etc) will increase the amount of data a web page uses. These types of web pages will take substantially more data than a page that is mostly text. Streaming music is the next biggest data hog, most people are likely to use up more data streaming music than when web browsing.   Lastly; streaming videos are the biggest data hogs.  Streaming video can use a very large amount of data. For most people this uses the largest t chunk of their data.

Now that you have an idea about how much data things take; here are some tips to help you better manage your data.

1.       Use wifi: If your phone has wifi capability try to use if whenever possible, especially to stream video. As an added advantage, wifi can in offer a faster connection than cellular data. Be aware that some things like picture messaging and certain apps may not work over wifi.  

2.       Beware of hidden data usage: Often thing that you wouldn’t expect to use data do, like gps, and automatic updates.  People selling phone plans may not tell you this, but even picture text messages use data (yes, even if you have unlimited texting). People that send a lot of picture text messages need not worry as picture messaging generally use much less data than web browsing. A typical picture text message will generally use less than 1 MB(less than 1/1,000^th of a GB) of data. Depending on your carrier your data usage for text messaging may or may not be deducted from your data limit. Unless you have a very low data limit, (much less than 1 GB) or you are sending literally thousands of picture messages a month, you’re probably not going to notice a dent in your data. If you want to reduce data used by automatic updates, some phones have options to disable automatic updates. You can also set your phone to only download them when connected to wifi if your phone has that option available.

3. Use data managing apps: There are many apps available that can help you manage your apps. They may be able give you information on what apps or services are using the most data. They can also alert you when you are getting near your data limit. On many phones, you can access advance data information. This data can tell you things like what apps are using the most data or could show you charts on data usage trends. If you want to reduce the amount of data your phone uses, for certain task, there are also apps for that too. For example, if you don’t want to give up using your gps on your mobile device; there are gps apps that offer an offline mode. With ‘offline mode’ you can download maps over wifi, and save them to your phone for later use. Keep in mind; some phones depend on a data connection for gps. Gps may still work with these devices. However; accuracy could be reduced, and it may take much longer to lock on to a satellite signal.

4.       Stop streaming: Cutting back on streaming videos including video calling, can reduce your data usage dramatically. If you find it hard to cut back, there are a few things you can do to save on data.  There is a direct correlation between the amount of data a video takes and the video quality. Lower quality videos are compressed more.  Reducing your video quality can significantly reduce data usage.  The same is true for streaming audio. Streaming audio generally uses much less data than streaming video. However, it still uses a fair amount of data. Some video and audio streaming apps have the option to change the quality of your video or audio. Setting this to a lower value can significantly reduce data consumption.  Avoid using the auto setting; this will automatically increase quality for faster connections. Be careful of videos that are not meant for streaming, they are not as highly compressed, and will use more data.

5.       Don’t use your phone as a modem: Some phones allow you to use your phone as a modem for your desktop or laptop computer.  It is advisable not to do this, as they go through data much faster than a typical phone, or tablet.   You may find yourself going way over your data limit. There have been cases, where people have been charged literally thousands of dollars in overages by doing this. If you choose to do this, do so with extreme caution.

6.       Go prepaid:  Switching to a prepaid plan may be a good option for people that have a very difficult time managing their data and find it hard to keep from going over their data limit. This would also be a good option for people with kids. With prepaid plans, once you reach your data limit, it shuts off until you renew your plan.  For those that do not want to go prepaid, some companies upon request can shut off your data when your limited is reached. Be aware; sometimes companies will charge a small fee for this.

7.       Use airplane mode: Most smart phones on the market today offer a mode called “airplane mode”. This mode as the name implies was created for airplanes and it shuts off all wireless capabilities to the phone including wifi and the ability to send and receive calls or text messages. Because of this, most people would only want to use it as a last resort. If your phone has a setting to disable data connections only, it would be a better idea to use that.  This may be a good idea if you are very close to the end of your billing cycle, and you are close to incurring(or already incurring) overage charges.

8.       Be careful of roaming:  Roaming is when you use another networks cellular tower for, data, text, or calling.  Cell phones will always try to use a tower that is in your network first, it if it can not find one in range, they will often “roam” on another carrier’s network. Unfortunately; there isn’t much you can do about this other than disabling the roaming feature in your phones settings (if your phone has this option).  If you choose to do this, keep in mind, your phone will not work in areas where your network tower is not available. Depending on your carrier, you may be charged extra fees for using data while roaming. If you roam oversees you may be charged even more.

9.       Get to know your phone: This is perhaps the best way to manage your data. Many phones on the market today have settings built in to the phone software, that can help you better manage your cellular data connections. For example; your phone might have charts and graphs which show data usage trends. These setting can also offer automatic alerts when you are nearing your data limit. If you find that your phone is lacking these features, consider downloading a data managing app. These apps can offer a lot of the same data managing features that are built into some phones.

submitted by anonymous dec 5,2015