They source their claim to a WebPageTest run [1], and WPT does run scripts. I can reproduce their results as:

1. Open an incognito window in Chrome

2. Open devtools, and configure it as mobile

3. Navigate to reddit.com

4. See ~1.5MB transferred

[1] https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210707_AiDc36_6f01cdff93b...

I was using Firefox, but I could get the 1.55MB result by trying that.

1. New private browsing window

2. Open devtools networking

3. Responsive design mode: Galaxy S9

4. Load reddit.com

>>>DOWNLOAD THE APP<<<

[0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.quantumbadger.redreader/

firefox: 17.85 / 12.54 MB transferred, brave: 15 MB, vivaldi: 9.6 MB, chromium: 13.1 MB,

I actually think that Reddit is just loading less of the posts due to the small screen.

https://blog.webpagetest.org/posts/understanding-the-new-cum...

That would make it $200+ to load the page including the advert.

Highest I've actually paid was in China at £3 per megabyte, and not only did I use normal phone stuff like data and email, because the UK network I was on allowed connections to my company, but the local wifi didn't, when I accidentally connected plugged in my phone without disabling tethering, the laptop started downloading stuff - ran up a $400 bill in about a minute before the flood of text messages I get every 5MB started to arrive (out of order) and I realised what was going on.

It seemed more of a marketing gimmick than a useful tool.

Unless you have a device with radios that happen to support extra bands that are not used in the US, then it's essentially incompatible with the Japanese network despite both being "LTE".

The biggest issue is the phone bands, if your phone does not support the local bands, it will not connect.

I had no issue having a secondary phone in Japan w/ my T-mobile sim and having a local NTT sim. With dual sim/esim even easier nowadays to run both networks.

In international locations to your point it gets you enough for Maps and Mail, and some basic web browsing. You won't be streaming, that's for sure. However, if I need more than that, I use it to bootstrap an e-sim like GigSky which you can then route all data traffic to (at least on iOS) via Cellular settings.

This way you keep your phone number, iMessage, texting, and get 5G data too.

T-Mobile's free 128kbs is enough for whatapp, navigation and a few emails (Their MAX plan gives free 256kbs).

After basic troubleshooting T-Mobile requested that I call their international support on a 2nd phone and they would happily help me fix the problem with the original mobile phone.

Of course I didn't have access to a 2nd phone, I was livid. Cancelled the contract with T-Mobile and got local service. Even in cancelling T-Mobile couldn't get it right, they sent me two additional bills for trivial amounts in the months that followed. Each bill under a dollar.

I recall getting a text about that £7.20 fee during a flight a couple years ago.

[1]: https://www.aeromobile.net/inflight-roaming/

Yet they still have a worse video player than what was available in the early 2000s

I'm not able to reproduce this either. Here's a desktop WPT run: https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210707_BiDcXB_65148b09266...

Could you share a screenshot, or a link to one of these oversized PNGs?

Recently on teddit.net, I've been getting an "Unable to connect" via some Tor Exit Nodes. So I'm having to create new circuits until teddit loads.

I'm not sure how to replicate this but I would be curious what old.reddit.com does via an equivalent methodology.

Edit - after waiting about a minute it crept up to 5.2MB transferred for somehow the same amount of uncompressed resources.

I loaded https://www.reddit.com/ in Firefox with an adblocker; the network inspector showed 4.8 MB transferred.