2023 - How much is your monthly home internet usage?

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › 2023 - How much is your monthly home internet usage?

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#3033845 9-Feb-2023 10:17

Dochart: From the answers that everyone provided this is what I’ve noticed with the monthly home internet usage. Feel free to correct me if it’s not accurate:

Low usage: between 300 GB - 1.5TB a month
Normal usage: between 2TB - 8TB a month
Heavy usage: 13 TB and greater a month

I may ask this question again if those hyperfibre plans come down in price to the current price of FibreMax plan or lower.

I'm afraid the numbers here are not reflective at all of the general population. Geekzone users are a ludicrously biased, self selected sample. Even if 2-8TB is 'Normal' for Geekzone users (and I highly contest that), that is so far above the general population for normal it's possibly an order of magnitude out.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are the product of my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

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Silvrav

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#3033850 9-Feb-2023 10:28

Talkiet:

Dochart: From the answers that everyone provided this is what I’ve noticed with the monthly home internet usage. Feel free to correct me if it’s not accurate:

Low usage: between 300 GB - 1.5TB a month
Normal usage: between 2TB - 8TB a month
Heavy usage: 13 TB and greater a month

I may ask this question again if those hyperfibre plans come down in price to the current price of FibreMax plan or lower.

I'm afraid the numbers here are not reflective at all of the general population. Geekzone users are a ludicrously biased, self selected sample. Even if 2-8TB is 'Normal' for Geekzone users (and I highly contest that), that is so far above the general population for normal it's possibly an order of magnitude out.

Cheers - N

Agree - asking on a tech site what your internet usage is is like asking what your fuel usage is on a transport forum.

My parents for instance, which I would consider a normal user, that does some emails, stream on TV and do whatsapp video calls from time to time, averages about 300gb a month.

Dochart

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#3033856 9-Feb-2023 10:36

Talkiet:
Dochart: From the answers that everyone provided this is what I’ve noticed with the monthly home internet usage. Feel free to correct me if it’s not accurate:

Low usage: between 300 GB - 1.5TB a month
Normal usage: between 2TB - 8TB a month
Heavy usage: 13 TB and greater a month

I may ask this question again if those hyperfibre plans come down in price to the current price of FibreMax plan or lower.

I'm afraid the numbers here are not reflective at all of the general population. Geekzone users are a ludicrously biased, self selected sample. Even if 2-8TB is 'Normal' for Geekzone users (and I highly contest that), that is so far above the general population for normal it's possibly an order of magnitude out.

Cheers - N

Maybe I should have rephrase it and do agree with you that using 2-8TB a month is not normal for a general population but I expect 2-8TB a month to be fairly normal with Geekzone users, a household with 4 or more people and those under the age of 30.

Talkiet

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#3033863 9-Feb-2023 10:54

I'd accept it's possible that 2TB/month for GZ users might be within 1 std dev of average (for GZ users, not genpop), but no way 8 is.

Even within GZ users, a lot of them just don't care about monthly usage (because it's largely irrelevant now with the penetration of unlimited plans) - so even those choosing to answer are more likely to be heavier users that still care about usage. (I know there were some lower responses - but I maintain that in general, higher usage users were more likely to respond)

Bear in mind that while I can't see usage details for every user in the country, and while average usage will differ from ISP to ISP, some back of the envelope calcs on a large dataset suggests the numbers so far here are well OVER an order of magnitude higher than actuality. (and no sorry, I can't be more specific than that)

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are the product of my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

alasta

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#3033884 9-Feb-2023 11:04

My 70Gb figure seems to be much lower than anyone else here, but I suspect it's not unusual among non-technical people.

That level of usage is enough to stream a handful of TV shows each month, and do all of my administrative activities. There must be plenty of people in the general population whose use case would be similar to this, particularly people who spend a lot of time outdoors, at work, or travelling.

boland

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#3033888 9-Feb-2023 11:19

Anyone who's with Skinny Broadband able to find out the data usage? Can't find it on their portal, and the modem UI doesn't display it either.

timmmay

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#3033895 9-Feb-2023 11:42

Talkiet:

I'm afraid the numbers here are not reflective at all of the general population. Geekzone users are a ludicrously biased, self selected sample. Even if 2-8TB is 'Normal' for Geekzone users (and I highly contest that), that is so far above the general population for normal it's possibly an order of magnitude out.

Agree. Working remotely and with streaming TV sometimes, we do 250 - 350GB per month. I'm not sure how I'd do 1TB or more - perhaps 4K streaming or hosting something on a server at home.

pacificsurfer51

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#3035260 11-Feb-2023 22:25

Vodafone HFC Max
400/500 GBs per month
2 Vodafone TV boxes, 1 PC, 1 Surface, 1 Laptop, 2 smart tv's running Netflix/Disney+, 1 tablet & up to 4 mobile devices.

gehenna

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#3035347 12-Feb-2023 13:00

Talkiet:
I'm afraid the numbers here are not reflective at all of the general population. Geekzone users are a ludicrously biased, self selected sample. Even if 2-8TB is 'Normal' for Geekzone users (and I highly contest that), that is so far above the general population for normal it's possibly an order of magnitude out.

There is a difference between contesting something and having an opinion about it. You have an opinion that's not backed up by the themes in this thread. You're entitled to that, it's your opinion, but you're not in a position to define or arbitrate what is normal usage or not.

Talkiet

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#3035358 12-Feb-2023 13:35

You're right, I know nothing about the usage patterns of a very large fraction of the BB users in NZ.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are the product of my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

gehenna

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#3035361 12-Feb-2023 13:44

That's not what I said and not what I'm referring to. If you were to frame your argument differently, I might get behind it, but at the moment you're simply assigning personal bias of what you think is good or bad.

Talkiet

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#3035364 12-Feb-2023 13:54

gehenna:

That's not what I said and not what I'm referring to. If you were to frame your argument differently, I might get behind it, but at the moment you're simply assigning personal bias of what you think is good or bad.

I don't believe I am assigning a personal bias. I am using 'normal' to mean what it means. I've also referred to standard deviations in a previous post, which refer back to 'normal distributions'.

I've seen indications in this thread that some people think 'normal' use is an order of magnitude higher than I have exceptionally good reason to think it actually is.

Now I do personally believe it's highly likely that usage in the 10's of TB on a residential connection is going be wasteful or pointless or both - but that's a different discussion.

What I am stating is that some of the numbers suggested here for normal use are simply not.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are the product of my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

raytaylor

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#3036060 13-Feb-2023 16:09

Here is a sample of ~1,600 subscribers on our rural fixed wireless network (30-50mbit services)
Data usage for the month of december 2022. Customer Names redacted.

There is probably approx another ~250 that are IOT devices, water pump monitoring or milking sheds that use less than 1gb of data and didnt appear in the report.

Being rural, data usage is probably less than your typical urban user.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GC78uppd8l_z_LljW5OKN8SAG4HO4HYbR1Sc3nbQf7c/edit?usp=sharing

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shk292

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#3036070 13-Feb-2023 16:29

boland:

Anyone who's with Skinny Broadband able to find out the data usage? Can't find it on their portal, and the modem UI doesn't display it either.

I can't find it anywhere on their site or on bills received; I guess most people don't care because it is unmetered. Makes me wonder how people without a water meter think of water useage?

From my TP-Link Deco report, I seem to average around 200-250GB per month. That's a family of 4 with 2 teenagers and multiple streaming devices

Lias

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#3036073 13-Feb-2023 16:36

Talkiet:

I've seen indications in this thread that some people think 'normal' use is an order of magnitude higher than I have exceptionally good reason to think it actually is.

While I think you probably have a valid point about GZ usage being above average, I wonder if the data you have access to is potentially biasing you in the opposite direction. Your data as far as I know comes from Spark, the ISP of choice for old people and the non tech savvy, who are fundamentally less likely to have as much data usage as the tech savvy or digital natives. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if it actually has the lowest average usage of any ISP in the country because of the makeup of it's users.

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