Understanding mobile data

Whenever you use the internet on your mobile or tablet, you’re using data. Most of our tariffs come with a monthly data allowance in megabytes (MB) or gigabytes (GB). Once you’ve used your allowance, you have three options:

1. Upgrade or change your tariff so you’ll get more data each month
2. Buy a one-off data Bolt On (or pay for data overage on uncapped tariffs, see your terms for cost per MB)
3. Wait until your monthly data allowance resets at your next bill date

Want to make your mobile data go further?

Where does my data go?

Downloading video uses the most data but sending or receiving emails with large attachments can use just as much. Here are a few examples, to give you a rough idea:

Email
Without attachments, the average email uses between 10 and 30KB of data. With attachments, it can be anything from 500KB for one photo, to several MB for large documents.

Social media
Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram can quickly burn through your data. Tweeting a message uses about 500KB, but if you're uploading lots of photos, it'll use more.

Apps, games and music
Downloading an app or game uses around 30MB and using apps online may drain your data quickly. Playing a game online could be anything up to 60MB an hour, or more. Downloading one song uses around 3 to 10MB.

Video, TV and films
In HD, an average video clip uses 3MB, 95MB for a TV show and 570MB for a film.
 

What’s the best data bundle for me?

1GB a month is roughly enough to:

• Browse for 11 hours
• Send 16,000 emails without attachments (or 300 with attachments)
• Watch 40 minutes of video
• Download 17 songs

3GB a month is roughly enough to:

• Browse for 33 hours
• Send 50,000 emails without attachments or 1,000 with attachments
• Watch 120 minutes of video
• Download 50 songs

30GB a month is roughly enough to:

• Browse for 330 hours
• Send 500,000 emails without attachments or 10,000 with attachments
• Watch 1,200 minutes of video
• Download 500 songs

Managing your data use

Go to My O2 Business. Sign in and you can see the data you've used. Your device may already have a data counter in the settings, or you can download an app from your device’s app store such as My Data Manager for free. McAfee Multi Access from O2 Business not only protects your device from malware and viruses, it can also tell you how much data you’re using and warn you when you’re approaching your data limit.

To help you stay on top of your data usage, we'll text you when you've reached 80% of your allowance and again when you've reached 100%. Once you’ve used up your monthly allowance you’ll go into data overage and pay per MB for any data you use until your monthly data allowance resets. See your terms for prices.

You could buy a one-off Bolt On to keep you going until your next bill date. If you have a Spend Cap, the price of this Bolt On will not be included within your Spend Cap. Or you could increase your monthly data package so you don’t have to worry about running out of data again.

Give us a call 0800 028 0202 or 8222 from your O2 mobile to find the best tariff for you.