Customer sometimes ask us why they've used so much data so quickly.  Here's the top reasons:


  • They've been using their phone as a Hotspot to connect a laptop (their own or someone else's).  If the laptop is set to automatically download updates, then it will download them when connected to hotspot and sometimes the updates can be very big eg hundreds of megabytes or even gigabytes.  Consider turning updates off for the duration of the USA trip to avoid this happening - even just using hotspot to connect your laptop for five minutes could result in your laptop download a very huge update file;
  • Back in Australia they probably use wi-fi when they're at home/work, but in the USA they're using 3G/4G data almost everywhere.  And because they're on holiday they're playing with their phone more often checking maps, uploading photos etc etc etc;
  • They're uploading more photos than usual to Facebook etc - uploading photos might use 5MB or more for each photo!;

  • Their phone is set to upload photos automatically to the cloud and because they're in the USA they're taking many many more photos than they normally would - for example, we recently had a customer who used their iPhone as a hotspot to connect their iPad, and their iPad backed up all its photos to iCloud and used up all the data;

  • They've been using Google Maps/Apple Maps, particular as a GPS, which can use up a lot of data;

  • They've been updating their apps manually or automatically.  Some app updates can be very big;
  • Apps like Skype, FaceTime, Viber, Urbanspoon, Yelp etc can use up lots of data.

If you're getting low on data and want to add more, please click here to read how to do this.