As a residential user you can get a lot of mileage from 100 GB of data on a hotspot. We will talk about that amount of data in a moment, but first, about your hotspot: Are you planning to use your smartphone as your hotspot? Be prepared to charge your phone battery frequently. Also check your phone plan to what “unlimited” high-speed data means. Some plans cap it at 22 GB, others at 50 GB. You could end up hitting a max cap or having to buy more data on the fly if you go over. Check your plan online in your account or call Customer Service. Unlimited talk and unlimited text are not the same as unlimited high-speed internet data.
If your hotspot will be a different device than your phone it’s best to get one that is compatible with your phone provider so you can access the hotspot from your phone if you need to.
Internet Data, even 100 GB of internet data, is like fuel. Conserve where you can.
That said, 100 GB of data is a lot of data for a single user. Not so much for a large household or small business. Let’s take a look at common online tasks covered by 100 GB of data.
You can stream 20,000 songs with 100 GB of data. That’s approximately 1,000 hours of streaming three-minute songs, or roughly 20 straight days of song streaming, for two people.
You could watch about 200 hours of standard definition video with your 100 GB of data. That’s about 6 hours of video streaming a day for a month at standard definition similar to a DVD. Pro tip: if you stream at HD or Ultra HD resolution you get only about 50 hours of streaming so check your settings in each streaming platform.
You could browse online for 1,200 hours with 100 GB of data.
You could read or send 200,000 email messages with attachments. Businesses easily send that many in a month and technically you can run a small business using a hotspot device.
Do you sit on conference calls with camera turned on? You’ll use up to 2.4 GB per hour that way or you can turn off your camera (and ask others to as well if that’s ok in your situation) to save big on data. You can do about 41 hours of camera-on conference calls with 100 GB.
100 GB of data is a lot of data to run through a hotspot. Know your components and costs.
