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How Much Is 10 Gigabytes (GBs) Of Internet Usage?

, By Patcoola

1 gigabytes (GBs) of Internet usage is actually 1000 megabytes (MBs) not 1024 megabytes.

The majority of Internet service providers define the allowable amount of free usage you receive with your service plan is measured in decimals units not binary units. This means for every 1 GB of actual data downloaded, your Internet usage would read 1.024 GBs used instead.

10 gigabytes of Internet usage is not a whole lot if you are an active Internet user or if you have children.

According to our Internet service value calculator 10 gigabytes per month doesn’t provide you a full day of Internet access.

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Daily Service

Average Daily Usage: 333 MBs (30 Day Period)

Est Web Surfing Hours: 37 (150KB/min)
Est Rich Media Hours: 5 (1MB/min)
Est Average Web Surfing Hours: 21

Monthly Service

Est Web Surfing Days: 47 (150KB/min)
Est Rich Media Days: 6 (1MB/min)
Est Average Web Surfing Days: 26

What do these numbers mean?

Sure these numbers sound good, at 21 hours per day, but your rich media hours which is the most important is a small 5 hours per day.

This means that you can view rich media web pages for 5 hours per day. The majority of modern websites contain rich media. Rich media includes: photos, graphics, animations, videos, advertising and anything interactive.

But this is just an estimate of usage, real world usage is almost impossible to measure as Internet activities vary for everyone.

The estimated web surfing hours assumes you are not using the Internet constantly as which would happen with reading. If we were downloading music / videos / software, the amount of time we can use the Internet is calculated below.

How much data is 333 megabytes per day?

Lets first address transfer rate, the speed in which you can download information from the Internet. Every time you view a web page you are downloading and anything you do that is Internet related is downloading or uploading.

Example:
Download speed: 2.5 Megabits (mbps)

This means that you can download 250 kilobytes (KBs) per second and can download 333 megabytes in 30 minutes.

1.5 mbps = 60 minutes (High Speed Lite)
2.5 mbps = 30 minutes (High Speed)
5.0 mbps = 15 minutes (High Speed Ultra)

How much YouTube or streaming video?

Daily: 333 megabytes of Internet usage
3 hours very low quality
1 hour 18 mins medium quality
37 mins high quality

Note: The video quality measured does not include high definition video.

How much Netflix?

One short movie every 3 days (1 hour 30 mins a movie)

Reality

These numbers are not reality, actual streaming videos’ data size will vary and your web surfing activities will also lower your overall daily Internet usage.

Remember we use the Internet to find the videos we want to watch, we use the Internet for everything. 3 hours of low quality online videos may actually be limited to half that amount after your daily surfing, email and searching for videos to watch. In addition the quality of the videos on the Internet is not the same all the time.

The majority of videos on the Internet are of medium quality or better. So we must always assume we have only 37 mins of video viewing. As technology improves the number of high definition videos increase, in the future better, larger video sizes will take over. A full high definition video of 10 minutes can be as large as 500 MBs.

Uploading

Did you know when you download a web page your computer sends a request for information, then continues to communicate with the website till everything on the web page is downloaded to your computer.

When you download, your computer sends a small amount of information to continue downloading. These transmission overheads are sometimes refereed to as talk back and can add up to large amounts. 333 megabytes would actually be 300 MBs received and 33 MBs sent.

10 gigabytes a month is not 10 gigabytes download-able

If you were to download 10 gigabytes, about 1-10% of the data received will be data sent, your actual Internet usage for downloading 10 gigabytes would be an estimated 11 gigabytes.

Thanks to transmission talk backs 1-10% of all data received is data sent.
So instead of 10 gigabytes per month your actual download-able Internet usage is 9 gigabytes per month, and we must remember that 1 GB of data is 1.024 GBs of Internet usage.

As you can see 10 gigabytes per month is actually small and is only useful if you’re a lite Internet user or for smart phones.

 

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Comments: 21, Write Comment

  1. jp says:

    I purchased a StraightTalk card with 10GB, how many hours of listening to music on youtube will that provide me per month?

    • Patcoola says:

      Because it’s youtube, we can’t know without doing a study. I estimate 10-20 hours for the whole month.

  2. Angie says:

    If i have 10GB of high speed data a month and i use my phone as a hot spot for Netflix how long per day for the month can I watch movies

  3. Tracy says:

    It been 5 days since i 1st got at&t wifi services of 10mb =1024gb.. i used 95.5of mb how far do i have close till i use it up

  4. zoie says:

    is 9.77gb out of 100gb a lot of internet usage cause my internet from explornet is slow ?

    • Patcoola says:

      No 100gb is not a lot, it’s about 100 hours of video for the whole month. If your Internet is slow, it’s in use or you have a bad connection.

  5. Jenine oliver says:

    So what your saying is that the Metro PCS plan that I added Hotspot on so that I can use it as my internet source for Roku and the plan says +10gbs means…….

  6. Barbra kilgore says:

    I have 1024 gb of internet thru my provider i have been using my amazon firetv its on around 24 hrs how much streaming in a 24 hr period am i using cause i notice my usage has gone from 233 to almost my limit since i started using my amazon firetv and i have various apps on it

  7. […] How Much Is 10 Gigabytes (GBs) Of … – 1 gigabytes (GBs) of Internet usage is actually 1000 megabytes (MBs) not 1024 megabytes. The majority of Internet service providers define the allowable amount of … […]

  8. Beverly venit says:

    I have 10G on my ATT Mifi. I use my computer 3/4 hours a week maybe.
    If my computer is off and the Mifi is off why does th mifi(wifi) show G’s
    Are being used. I used my computer in the last two weeks about 2 hours and it
    Shows I’ve used 3.08Gs of my 10G allowance. Just me
    On the computer. The mifi sits off in 5 minutes when not in use. I have 16 days left
    Before i am billed. Confused. Thanks for any help.

    • Patcoola says:

      @Beverly

      I can think of a few reasons to why 2 hours of computer use could result in 3GBs of usage.
      -automatic software updates (mostly common for Apple products)
      -BitTorrent
      -video advertisements
      -videos and web games
      Combined together we can see high internet usage.

      Otherwise 10GBs is really just equal to about 9 and a half hours of usage.
      Note that, the faster your Internet speed is, the faster you can transfer lager amounts of data in a short amount of time.

  9. cece says:

    so if I have 10 gigs of data I can only watch 37 mins of video a month please tell me

    • Patcoola says:

      you missed the part that says daily.
      37 * 30 = 1110 minutes per month (18 hours and 30 minutes)
      Approximately 5 hours of high definition.

  10. Mariela says:

    I have always wondered what was the equivalent (daily usage of internet) to 10GB. I was really considering signing up to that cell phone company that offers 10GB for each member in a family of 4, but now I won’t, it will mean going over each month and paying extra. Thanks for your information :) I feel smarter already!

 

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