My issue in the past with cable gigabit service was the relatively tiny upstream bandwidth of 20-50Mbps. This made for some challenges a few years ago when suddenly everybody in the house was on Zoom all day long.
500 for $5 would cost me about $50 - unlimited makes perfect sense.
I'm admittedly a minimal user of my phone. I average about 10 unlocks per day. Especially when I'm on-the-go, it's just calls and text messages, some driving directions, and maybe looking up a phone number or business hours. If I use it to listen to an audiobook or podcast, I download those ahead of time on WiFi. Using only 200 MB per month is normal.
That's about 5 - 10 times the amount of unlocks I do. Not what I'd consider minimal, at all. :D
Continuously streaming video? Not at all, might watch something here or there but most of my device usage is text or just reading. I barely use the phone or texting or social media.
I think we forget just how data-hungry modern apps are. A 1080p "Full-HD" YouTube video will consume 4GB/hour of watch time. Even going down to 480p is still 1GB/hour.
True. I really try to avoid using the browser for anything unless I'm on WiFi because a single page (really all the other crap that gets loaded besides the actual content that I'm looking for, even with uBlock Origin) might eat dozens of MB. For a while I used the NPR One app to stream podcasts, but I gave it up when it started using way, way more data than streaming audio should ever require.
I shouldn't have to look at my actual bandwidth usage. As I wrote in a different comment [1]:
> You are unknowingly accepting being ripped off. It's not reasonable for big ISPs like Comcast to offer me 300 megabits download 15 megabits upload for $70 a month (might've been $90, but assume $70) while EPB of Chattanooga [1] offers 1 gigabit symmetrical for $67.99 a month. What speed any individual actually needs doesn't have to come into the picture. In matters of consumer protection, the principle of the thing matters just as much as actual consumer needs.
> Today's internet technology (particularly optical fiber [2], paired with hardware implementing DOCSIS 3.1 or 4 [3]) is fully capable of providing 1 gigabit symmetrical for "the majority of people", even in rural areas. Moreover, in the long term, transitioning to fiber would be less expensive to the big ISPs like Comcast [4], but Comcast keeps raising prices on broadband over decades-old copper wires and committing subsidy fraud [5]. Don't let big ISPs define "good enough" to be much lower than technology and the price of the technology allow.
(The [] citations within my quotes refer to links in my other comment. I'm leaving them in for Ctrl-F purposes.)
Maybe people are actually using their 1 Gbps bandwidth if they have multiple 4K TVs and do serious gaming? I don't know, I doubt it.
I tell everyone to look at their actual cellular data usage too. I think all middle class Americans just buy unlimited plans now, but I do just fine with 500 MB per month for $5.