Cell Phone Plans Revisited - One Month on New Data Plan

In a previous blog entry, I wrote about how Speakout, our cell phone provider, was changing their data add-on plan from $10/month for unlimited data usage, to $10/month for 100MB with additional data charged at $0.10/MB.  Never needing to keep track of our data usage in the past, we did not know whether 100MB would be sufficient or if we should sign up for a more expensive ($35/month for 500MB + 100 talk minutes) data plan that provided more usage data.  We decided to try the 100MB for a month to see how much data we actually use.

With this new limited data plan, Speakout now provides a handy indicator of the current data usage throughout the month, as well as how many days are left in the month.  We made a point of continuing with our normal usage patterns to get an accurate estimate.  With just two days left in this first month, we have only used 65MB.  If this sample month turns out to be representative of our average usage, then the 100MB/month will be more than enough for us and the Speakout plan is still the most cost effective for our needs.