Cord-cutting at What Data Cost?
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- Nov 29, 2003
- 14,302
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Are you using a Comcast Modem, if so their numbers were always double what my router said we used.
- Nov 29, 2003
- 14,302
- 18,366
My son disabled that when we had one of those modems ( and after every update it would turn the Hotspot on he would shut it off again).
It was reported a lot in the xfinity forums at Comcast's site when they were doing the low 300gb data caps, the Comcast usage was always higher then what Customer's Routers said, the worse posts I read were the ones who wrote their data doubled or tripled the month when the caps started from the previous month with no caps.
For anyone who does not use Cable Companies Phone Service, buy a modem, it will pay for itself within the first 8-10 months or so ( the Motorola 6141 sells for $40-60, the 6181 $70-100).
You just cannot use streaming(Sling TV, PlayStation Vue) as mindless background noise. you cannot let it idly keep running if you are not watching it.
What I do is watch what I can on the digital economy channels provided on cable like TBS, and History, a few more so it helps keep my usage down some
3 days left in my billing cycle and I am just over 500gb used. I think the app is a little behind actual usage though, should update tomorrow. It is by my estimates to be right on my guess earlier in the thread, on what is probably the heaviest usage period for us with the extra few days home more during the holiday, and considering that my daughter left Disney streaming on accident all night a few days ago....
My ISP (Cox) doesn't enforce their cap, apparently. But I'm still paying attention to what I'm now using since cutting the cord and switching to PS Vue. I want to see whether I will regularly blast by my 350 GB "limit" and possibly trigger getting contacted by Cox with warnings and pitches to upgrade to the next tier. (Upgrading would partially defeat the purpose of cutting the cord).
What I've found is that on weekdays, I use less than 10GB of data per day, but on weekends, when I leave sports running in the background throughout the day, I may go as high as 25 GB. I'm still getting all my locals OTA, so for example, during last night's 3-hour MLB All Star Game, I wasn't using any data. I notice nights when I'm primarily watching Netflix or Amazon (no 4K/HDR yet), my data use is a bit higher for the same amount of time.
I can't really say how much data I've used during my first full month since cutting the cord, because for some odd reason Cox didn't record my usage for 12 whole days this past month. Regardless, I figure I need to average around 12.5 GB per day in order to stay within my limit, which means turning it off if I'm not really watching and just putting on music or something.
Does anyone have experience with exceeding Cox's limit? Would they really hassle you? I'm sure it's only a matter of time before they become more enforcement oriented as more people cut the cord and start gobbling data using live TV steaming services.
EDIT: I looked it up and it seems Cox is already testing limiting data usage by charging fees in the Cleveland market.
I got an email once about 4 or 5 years ago for my Cox Tulsa account, when the caps were lower and I went over whatever it was then. I have been over a few times in Las Vegas using the slingbox to watch my dvr in Tulsa and never received a notice for the Las Vegas Cox account. I used 590Gb last month and I've used 340Gb of the 700Gb this month in Tulsa with 12 days left. I watch a couple hours of Netflix/Amazon each week, sometimes it's been 4k, but I think the College baseball, softball and CFL games on espn 3 are pushing me up. I had one day with 60Gbs and several with 25-30Gb of usage last month. I'm guessing those were days I watched a lot of games. I might push the limit this month as there are several CFL games on ESPN 3 only this week and next.
Because I have odd work hours, freelancing, I frequently DVR sports. Does anyone do this with PS Vue? I understand that Sling has no DVR capability.
I'm in the same boat: freelancing and needing to DVR sports. PS Vue is great for that because I can just set it to record, for example, any single occurrence of Wimbledon on ESPN, and every occurrence of Wimbledon matches appears in my recorded shows list, even occurrences on ESPN2. Same thing for the recent College Baseball World Series. And the best part is I don't have to worry about how much space it's taking up on an internal set-top box hard drive. That will come in handy for the Olympics.
Now here's the bad news: depending on your market, you likely won't get your locals through PS Vue, so you'll need to resort to getting them either OTA (with a separate DVR device if you want record them) or the smallest channel package you can get from satellite or cable. In my case, for sports anyway, it hasn't been an issue except for the NBA Finals that were on ABC and last night's MLB All Star game.
Suddenlink, who went cap-less until 2014 in my area just recently added a unlimited data plan. My monthly internet bill is $80/month for 200 down/20 up from the $68/month (75down/10up) I was paying before the cap and after the cap was added.
My house has been using data hardcore since we had the cap removed and we used over a Terabyte of data last month streaming/downloading/surfing/gaming
So lets say your base internet is $60 for 300GB with a $10 charge for every 50GB over (seems standard for the overage fee) it would come to $60 for the base internet price + $140 in overage costs if you used the data I used last month on that plan... (which was hardcore use between a family of three)
Wow. And that's not including the programming source. The cord is looking better and better.
It all depends on your usage. Fortunately you can give it a try with either service and not do it if it looks like it is going to cost you more.
I haven't checked my usage for this month that but I expect it to be in line with what I had last month and before.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk
I haven't checked my usage for this month that but I expect it to be in line with what I had last month and before.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk
It goes with what I'm saying, don't stream unless you are watching it. Leaving it on continuously as background noise is just wasting data. I have both my Roku 3 & Fire TV Stick set to 720p & stereo to hopefully cut down some on the data consumption.
Thanks for the heads up regarding the Fire Stick settings. I certainly don't need 1080p and DD+ audio on a 22-inch TV in my kitchen, where I'll mainly be putting on sports and news in the background.
According to Comcast, I have a TB per month. I divided by day and it comes to 33 GB per day. I have yet to meet or exceed that, using Netflix, Skype, Pandora, and Sling. So the extra just carries over per day. I don't even come close on the weekend where I use more data. My consumption is approximately between 20-25 GB per day, watching everything from movies, to sports.
