In reply to a post by David_W:

Mobile networks are not well suited to heavy use, because the capacity is limited and expensive to bolster. The mobile networks have moved away for 'all you can eat' data, with Three policing their 'all you can eat' data tariffs in an attempt to restrict them to untethered phones only, and the other networks going to limited tariffs. When unlimited data was at its height a few years ago, saturation in popular areas was a major problem - the experience was as bad as when you land up in a 2G only area, where the very limited capacity (tens of kbits/s without EDGE) can mean the data service is unusable.

Very True.

T-Mobile actually refused to renew (on the same terms) my sim only contract that allowed unlimited data and tethering.

In reply to a post by ian72:

The 4GEE data usage calculator doesn't really take account of modern HD streaming rates - it is rather conservative.

I believe Andrew covered this in the news a while back (maybe last year) that EE had assumed data usage based on an average 6 meg 3G connection and neglected to notice that YouTube and iPlayer and other streaming sites up their data rate when the throughput increases (better picture quality).

In reply to a post by pcoventry76:

that's because they stopped doing it.

They did?
http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/shop/pay-monthly/plans/?pr...

£27 a month or more gets you unlimited data. However they throttle this to 4megabit.

In reply to a post by pcoventry76:

In all the time I have had 3 they have never done in 10 years what EE did in 10 mins, I'd say if 3's rep is bad EE is disastrous.

Also a fair point!

The guy behind the till at the local petrol station recommends the new GoFasterJuice - it's almost twice the price of normal fuel because it's brand new but your car will go twice as fast. He reckons you'll need half a tank to do your regular journeys.

But it's now such fun driving so fast that you make more trips and visit new places that had been too far away before. So you're disappointed when you run out of GoFasterJuice before the end of the month.

I don't think you were ripped off.
Perhaps the solution is to fit a fuel gauge so you can monitor how much you're using?

In reply to a post by ceedee:

I don't think you were ripped off.
Perhaps the solution is to fit a fuel gauge so you can monitor how much you're using?

Nice analogy........ but totally useless as it doesn't address my original point!

btw, i have installed a counter on my phone

I am not sure what the original point was. You are suggesting that data usage increases moving to 4G. If you were doing identical things on 3G and 4G then the data usage should be identical.

So, either something different is happening (perhaps higher quality videos via youtube because it recognises it is a higher data rate - but that is difficult to account for from EEs perpective), you are doing something additional or there is a technical issue with your device and it is doing data transfers that you are not aware of.

Ideally you need to know what data is being transferred but that may not be feasible - maybe there is an app for your handset that would real time monitor data usage and what apps are using it?

When browsing the EE/Orange offerings about 3 months back, I noted that there was a warning that HD versions of videos, increase the total data transferred by something like 4 times.