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VPNs for ad-blocking According to ACCC data, NBN users chewed through an average of 355GB of data in December 2020, which is a 28 percent increase from the same time in 2019. That average is somewhat curbed by the lower-usage realities of NBN 12 plans (around 165GB), with NBN 100 (and faster) plans accounting for an average of 555GB. Given the ongoing flexibility of many workplaces allowing employees to work from home, it’s safe to assume those figures are, right now, higher than the trending-upwards percentages from the previous six-month period that was measured. We strongly recommend comparing your current NBN plan with others at least once a year to ensure your plan and provider is best for your home internet needs. The other infinitely less accurate way is to track data usage on a per-device basis, but bear in mind that your home data usage will encompass every device that connects to your home network’s router or modem-router for internet usage, and will include a mix of active and background use (e.g. automatic updates). Here’s a breakdown of the approximate hourly data-usage ranges of popular streaming services: For example, downloading Mortal Kombat 11 from scratch on PC uses 100GB download which, at a full 100Mbps NBN 100 download speed, equates to 45GB per hour (and even then, you’re not even halfway through downloading the game). Similarly, updates for games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and its free-to-play variant Call of Duty: Warzone can measure in at more than 30GB. Because of this huge variance in data usage, gaming on a capped internet connection can be tricky to measure. We’d always suggest getting an unlimited data plan if it’s available to you, as these plans offer the best value. However, if for some reason you can’t access an unlimited data plan (or if you simply don’t use enough data to warrant one), a 500GB data plan should do you fine. If you live by yourself or with one other person, you may be able to swing 200GB per month. Check out the table below to see what each amount translates to in terms of video streaming, music streaming, gaming and more, split among each activity. For everyday web browsing, web browsers like Opera have the option of saving data. For Opera specifically, this is done by activating ‘Opera Turbo’ mode. Other browsers, like Chrome or Firefox, have data-saving extensions that can help bring the browsing megabytes down. Videoconferencing software may have options to disable HD video calling, which can greatly reduce data usage. For Zoom, open the settings (gear icon) on the desktop software, select Video, then uncheck the ‘Enable HD’ box in the ‘My Video’ section. Streaming services like Netflix, Stan and YouTube default to quality rather than data-saving. The lower the quality, the more data you save. YouTube lets you manually select available video quality with the settings (gear icon) button. Netflix and Stan both have ‘auto’ quality settings, but these can be tweaked in the app settings (under specific Profile ‘Playback Settings’ for Netflix) between Low, Medium, and High for Netflix and Stan, as well as Ultra (on supported content) for Stan. For music streaming services like Spotify, you can adjust the streaming quality options to use less data, where lower equates to less data used. An ‘automatic’ setting will match quality to your connection speed which, for music, is likely going to be the highest bitrate quality. Spotify, for instance, also lets you shift between low, normal, high and, for premium customers, very high presets, each of which incrementally uses more data per hour. Dig into your account settings in Facebook, and right down the bottom you’ll see a ‘Videos’ tab that lets you tweak the video default quality between ‘Default’, ‘SD Only’, and ‘HD if available’. Selecting ‘SD Only’ will save data; similarly, switching ‘Auto-play Videos’ to ‘Off’ will stop videos from automatically playing when you scroll through your Facebook feed. When downloading rented or purchased movies and TV shows on stores like iTunes, opting to download the SD version can help save gigabytes of data per download.
