This past weekend I was talking with my sister-in-law who is so excited about a Verizion iPhone and will be pre-ordering one next week. The subject of data plans came up and I related why I dropped my unlimited plan for a lesser(and cheaper) option when I got the chance. 

Basically I don’t use much data. That doesn’t mean I don’t use my iPhone. Over the summer ATT announced that they were adding two tiers of data and new customers would have to choose on of them. I was grandfathered in with the Unlimited, but could still switch to the 200 MB of data per month ($15) or 2 GB ($25). I thought: I bet I use less than 2GB and could switch to the 2GB plan and save $5 a month. Also my wife and I were both unemployed at the time and saving was a good idea. So I pulled up the website and looked at a 6 month graph of my data usage. I was shocked. The most I had used was 80MB in a month, and that was about 20MB higher then other months. So needless to say I decided to save $15 a month and get the 200MB plan.

Think about why and things start to make sense. Most of my time is spend at two places: work and home, both of which have Wi-Fi. When I am not at one of those places I am often driving (from one to the other). Since I don’t watch netflix or surf the web while driving that time is null as far as data use. The small amount of time I don’t have Wi-Fi I use 3G. One might suggest that instead I get an iPod Touch and go back to a “dumb” phone, but that defeats the point: I only have one device to carry.

Here is what it looks like now. I am still low. Of note is that I was unemployed until the first week of October, so a drop in usage then makes sense.

It looks like I am not alone. According to a survey by Daily Tech 34% use less then 200MB. Since Verizon is doing all the iPhones at $30/month for unlimited data it means they make a boatload off all those users who don’t use a ton of data. ATT tried that, but some users use a bunch and tiered plans help tax them with overages.