New iPad Owners Blow Through Their Entire Data Plan in Hours

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Posted March 21, 2012 at 2:42pm by Shalom Levytam

The Wall Street Journal is reporting on what may become a major concern for owners of the new iPad, extreme data use.

Brandon Wells got the new iPad last Friday, started wirelessly streaming March Madness games the next day and by Saturday night was out of gas. Two hours of college basketball-which he viewed mounted to his car dashboard and live at tournament games-had burned through his monthly wireless data allotment of two gigabytes.

The journal relays numerous stories of other customers who have encountered similar situations. Just a few hours of using their new tablet and poof, there goes their data plan.

4G LTE lets users browse faster and consume higher quality content. One issue complicating matters is that many web services analyze your connection to determine what quality content to serve. Thanks to the fast speed of LTE, these web services are likely serving the highest quality content previously reserved for Wi-Fi.

With cellular networks trying to squeeze every dollar possible from their customers it may be a while before you can browse freely on your new iPad.

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sls - March 22, 2012 at 2:21pm

That's odd.. I picked up my iPad on Monday afternoon, transferred the data plan from iPad 1 over. At the time I transferred from 3G to 4G LTE my usage was 708MB used. I still have about 1.2GB left. Driving home my kid played YouTube for about 20 mins. Connected to my wifi and turned on the airplane mode. Tuesday used about 30 mins or so to buy Amazon giftcard, check email about 30 mins. Back home turned off data, put on airplane mode. Using wifi only. Today morning after I read this thread, I went back and checked my data usage it shows I only have 780MB left. WTF. I called AT&T to get details of my data usage, they told me that due to the prepaid data plan I can only see my summary usage, I cannot see all details. Wow. I'm thinking about returning my iPad; it is very nice and yes I do agree and I love it even though I'm not an Apple fan, but not with data hunger. I will go broke every month....

iDood - March 22, 2012 at 3:58am

This is why I wasn't crazy with the new IPad. I'm glad I kept my iPad 2 and still able to tether with my iPhone 4S with PDAnet.

Walker - March 21, 2012 at 6:25pm

So basically download 3 magazines for $30... Yeah no thanks!

What - March 21, 2012 at 4:41pm

Streaming live nba game for 2 hours no wonder he got his data burn out.. He must have streaming very high resolution anyway 2gb data plant you have plenty video to stream to be honest my kid playing YouTube 2 day while we on the road I still have 1.6gb left...

datumax - March 21, 2012 at 3:25pm

"Two hours of college basketball-which he viewed mounted to his car dashboard and live at tournament games-had burned through his monthly wireless data allotment of two gigabyte[s]." What is this guy doing watching March Madness while driving!? FWIW, He probably kept reconnecting / searching for signal while driving in and out of 3G &/ LTE range which probably drained his battery faster, too. Perhaps that could partially explain his rapid data consumption.

Dc5 - March 21, 2012 at 3:15pm

I ran out of my 3GB data plan with AT&T in 2 days, there has to be something wrong with this data usage in the new iPad cause I didn't used it as much as I use my iPhone 4s.

datumax - March 21, 2012 at 3:21pm

Sounds like we need a REVERSE "4G Unrestrictor," to conserve bandwidth on sites/apps that prefer HQ content for LTE users. I wonder who will develop it first!

matrixmaniac - March 21, 2012 at 4:06pm

That's what we'll need the jailbreakers for! The only ones to save us from the telco vampires!

Djelimon17 - March 21, 2012 at 3:10pm

Without huge bandwidth like maybe 60 GB or some content deal like Bell offers, 4G makes little sense to me.