When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic last March, workers across many industries were sent home to work remotely. A year later, many of them still are, yet they are still largely unaware of their data usage and other factors about their internet connections, according to new data cap research from HighSpeedInternet.com.
In a recent report, HighSpeedInternet.com said that many consumers who are under data cap plans risk running out of data during the course of a month because nearly half (48%) do not know how much data their plans allow them to use per month.
More than a third (37%) hit their internet data limit during the last year, with more than two thirds (68%) of those paying overage fees. The fee for exceeding the cap limit averages $10 for every 50 GB, according to the researchers.
As a result, three-quarters of those surveyed said they would pay a premium for a home internet plan free of data caps.
Yet it wasn’t necessarily the result of working from home that pushed many consumers over the limit. According to the research, 59% of internet users cited movie and TV streaming as consuming most of their bandwidth, with 18% citing gaming.
“It’s also worth noting that even when ISPs don’t charge overage fees, they often throttle your connection speed if you pass a certain limit. This can also be true of some plans that are marketed as ‘unlimited data,’ so be sure to always read the fine print on your contract,” HighSpeedInternet.com said in a blog post. “You can make your data last longer by lowering the quality of your video (most services will try to give you the best quality your connection can handle), or by downloading titles to a device rather than streaming them. Even with these precautions, video still uses a lot of data.”