What causes data usage on Xfinity?
What triggers or leads to Data Usage on Xfinity?
Xfinity is one of the biggest cable and high speed internet company of America that provide broadband internet services, cable television, and telephone communications. With increased use of streaming of movies and shows, playing games online, and use of data intensive applications across devices in homes, some of the issues that could lead to high data usage on Xfinity TV Packages include the following.
Internet Browsing and Email Web browsing and even just checking your email uses up data, and all of that adds up to your monthly use. The above mentioned basic internet activities may not consume a lot of data each time they are executed; the number of hours spent every day on the Internet for both personal and business purposes will sum up. This means that web browsing, and email consumption will consume up to 200MB on average after an hour.
Streaming Video Content Watching videos on the Internet whether it is by using YouTube or Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and others can consume the most data. Watching high-definition videos online using 3GP or MP4 formats for just several hours a day can result in the usage of 3 to 5 GB of data. Another factor is Video Quality: Streaming in 4k ultra HD consumes about 7GB per hour while 1080p high-definition consumes about 3GB per hour. That is why through limiting video resolution one may reduce data usage.
Streaming Music While online music streaming platforms such as Spotify, pandora and Apple music use far much lesser data than the video streaming platforms, they can consume a reasonably large amount of data depending on the hours spent listening to music daily. Listening music in normal quality reduces the amount of data utilized per hour to approximately 150MB. Therefore if you use music services and spend several hours per day connected to the services then you can end up consuming more internet data than you would imagine.
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Gaming It is important to note that online gaming is both a constant source of data consumption and fluctuates in terms of the amount of data it requires. Social media games are extremely light in terms of data usage, while playing high-quality and interactive online games like Fornite, Call of Duty, Overwatch etc can consume between 3-4GB per hour. Console gaming also involves downloading large game file updates and patches, which in some cases can run in the tens or hundreds of GB.
Software updates including updates for operating systems and applications To protect your devices and installed apps, you should download new versions from the respective software developers. These OS and app updates vary in size from a few hundred MB and up to a few GB for major updates. Background updates, which occur without the user’s knowledge, contribute to using up some of the allotted monthly data.
Cloud Storage and Backups Storing your device data or saving files on Web applications such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive, iTunes or iCloud require ever more background data as the size of data stored on the cloud rises. Picture and video file formats are some of the largest consumers of space, leading to a larger need for cloud storage.
Internet-connected Devices Today’s devices and appliances are smart and many of them include internet connectivity and applications that allow for remote control and monitoring. IoT devices such as smart thermostats, surveillance cameras, smart speakers, smartwatches and others often need a little but constant amount of data consumption which may eventually add up across many devices.
Multiple Users and Devices The more such combined, concurrent connectivity signifies more contention for your home bandwidth resources. Often multiple members of a household will use their smartphones, tablets, laptops, and gaming consoles to browse the internet, and this can significantly boost your use of your monthly data allowance. Local downloads and updates on each gadget also increase your total usage of data.
In this section we will outline some of the key ways through which data usage can be managed effectively. Although enabling unlimited data usage is convenient as it does not result in getting charges for going over the limit, it entails incurring higher costs. Keeping track of usage to avoid or limit activity is the most cost effective way to moderate your usage in a given month. Here are some tips:
- Keep track of your usage within the Xfinity app or in your Xfinity My Account portal and receive data usage warnings when you’re at 75% and at 100% of your allowance.
- Reduce video streaming quality to 480p or even lower when you want to watch high definition movies and shows without using up all the data allowance.
- Get to download videos, movies and playlists in free W-Fi wherever it is available for viewing later.
- Keep the updating of your smartphone and applications limited to Wi-Fi and avoid automatic backups through the cellular data connection.
- Since your photos can accumulate a lot of storage space over time, set a monthly cloud backup and sync limit for your photo storage apps.
- Limit the usage of IoT and smart home devices and their connections and backups whenever they are not used or required.
- Parents should ensure that gaming consoles are not set to update games and downloads at night without the knowledge of the child.
Knowing what factors are consuming most of your high-speed data, and being mindful of these activities every month you can effectively manage your Xfinity data usage and prevent occurrences of over-utilization that might result in expensive overage charges. It is recommended to pay close attention to your activity both, online and offline, including internet, streaming, applications, and connected devices in an effort to utilize the most of the data plan offered by a particular plan.
