Thank goodness I switched and bought a sale data package!

Hey there @lizdance40,

Thank you for sharing the cause in your accounts data spike; this could potentially help other customers pinpoint where data usage is coming from!

Since your son’s work is using Google Maps, do they go over using plain view for routes, or have the option to download the route for offline access?

Apple Maps wouldn’t be a bad suggestion either, especially since Apple Maps switched from using image data directly from Google to vector data.

Thanks again for sharing!
Charise

Thanks Charise!

I was curious about the spike and the switch to Google on the iPhones may have proved how thrifty the Apple maps, turn by turn directions is.

I  didn't know why Apple used so much less, can't say I understand the technology, but whatever works. 

It can also save data to load maps and directions before leaving wifi.

The guys are using turn, by turn, and don't have wifi at work to load customer addresses before going out for a delivery.

It has been suggested that Waze or some other offline turn by turn app may be a data saver.

But they have to load on wifi in order to work offline.

Thank goodness for the big data plan!

When we first switched to the Mobile Share Value Plan we also signed up for the 10GB plan.  My wife & I both had the Grandfathered unlimited data plan, but I was only using about 2-3GB a month and she was getting throttled and still using about 5-6GB a month.  I looked at each of our highest months and combined they were still under 10GB, and the truth is, they weren't both in the same month, so we had even more "wiggle room".  After we were on the Mobile Share plan, my usaged settled around 2.5GB/month and hers grew up to about 7GB (since she wasn't being throttled any longer).  When the promo came along, I made the decision to switch us to it as well.  A few months later, she changed jobs and could no longer use wifi during the day, then a few months ago, my job changed the policies and we can no longer connect our personal phones to the company guest wifi.  Suddenly our 8-9GB a month usage started spiking and in our peak month we actually used over 24GB of our 30GB plan.  Even just last month, my phone used 8GB of our 18GB usage.  It's amazing to me to see how much wifi we had been using during the day while at work that we can no longer do.  It also helps me to see that keeping our phones plugged in to external power all day also helped to keep our wifi connections active (when we could use them) all day long too.

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@lizdance40 wrote:

...

It has been suggested that Waze or some other offline turn by turn app may be a data saver.

But they have to load on wifi in order to work offline.

 

Thank goodness for the big data plan!

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If your son has an iPhone or an iPad, then he could get a dedicated GPS app like TomTom which would use about 1GB of storage on the device, but would download the full maps with turn-by-turn directions possible.  The drawback to those is that they do take  up a huge chunk of storage on the phone, and they tend to cost about $50 for a good quality app.

Since our car was totaled in an accident on 08/01, our replacement doesn't have an built-in GPS.  I have been using Waze on my iPad Air and running it non-stop for a 400 mile road trip we took last weekend (just about 30 hours span) still used less than 200MB of cellular data. This was doing no pre-caching on wifi, it was using the cellular data the whole time, with turn-by-turn routing.  I will probbaly use the iPad this way in our new car all the time.

Both kids have a good stand alone GPS unit (Garmin).  They work great for long trip or when you aren't in a hurry.  Therein lies the problem with standard GPS units.

After testing the accuracy, we find we can't depending on them.  When you need door to door directions, a stand alone GPS unit will only ballpark, at best.  

It wouldn't matter if they weren't delivering pizza.  It has to get to the right door, and fast.

Since both boys are pulling in big tips, and I still have plenty of data left over, no worries....yet 

I will suggest they go back to apple maps.   There was a glitch with ATT and apple maps a month ago, some may remember....

there are settings in google maps for it to pre cache the maps for the town since its where they are using it.  Google maps does work well in stand alone mode as I would call it.  Google maps seems to use more data as its adding WAZE data in now.  I look for google to fully intigrate waze into google maps since they bought them a while ago.

So I took the kids word for it...not a good idea.  So much for young people being technically inclined...

After looking through his settings at data use, turns out the dope turns off wifi to save battery when he goes out and often forgets to turn wifi back on.

while maps was a big one, YouTube, Spotify were much bigger.

So he now knows what to curb and my roll over should be back up to ridiculous next month.