Data limits
What ‘unlimited’ includes, the three published conditions that qualify it, what actually eats your allowance, and how much data an ordinary household really uses.
Sections on this page
The facts
- On the phone, at home
- Yes, genuinely unmetered
- Tethering
- Capped on some plan generations
- Extreme outliers
- Briefly queued at busy masts
- Abroad
- Ceiling applies, then per-gigabyte
What it means for you
On the handset, at home, yes — it is genuinely unmetered on all four mast owners. Three published conditions bend it, and every one of them is readable before you sign.
| Condition | What it does in practice |
|---|---|
| Tethering cap | Limits sharing your data with a laptop, on some plan generations |
| Traffic management | Queues extreme outliers at saturated masts; normal heavy use never notices |
| Fair use abroad | Ends the unlimited part at a published figure, then charges per gigabyte |
The tethering clause is the one that catches people out, because it is the one that matters if you work away from a desk. Read it on your exact tier, not on the marketing page.
The facts
- Largest
- High-quality video streaming
- Second
- Cloud photo and file backup
- Occasional but heavy
- App and system updates
- Smallest
- Messaging, email, maps, music
What it means for you
| Activity | How hungry it is |
|---|---|
| Video at high quality | By far the biggest consumer on most accounts |
| Cloud photo and file backup | Large, invisible, and easily moved to home Wi-Fi |
| App and system updates | Heavy in bursts; restrict them to Wi-Fi |
| Social feeds with autoplay video | Substantial, and autoplay can be switched off |
| Messaging, email, maps, music | Comparatively tiny |
The facts
- Where to find out
- Your provider’s app
- How much history
- Three months
- What to buy
- That average plus modest headroom
- What people do instead
- Buy roughly double
What it means for you
The honest answer is far less than most people buy. Rather than guessing — or letting somebody in a shop guess for you — open your app and read three months of recorded usage. That captures holidays, unusual weeks and everything else.
Buy that measured figure with a little headroom, and handle any unusual month with a one-off add-on rather than a permanent tier increase.
The facts
- Change one
- Streaming quality down a notch
- Change two
- Backups on home Wi-Fi only
- Change three
- Autoplay video off
- Cost of all three
- Nothing
What it means for you
- Drop video quality one step inside the streaming app.
- Restrict backups, photo sync and updates to home Wi-Fi.
- Turn off autoplay video in social apps.
- Download anything you will watch more than once.
- Check which apps use most data in your phone’s settings — the answer is usually a surprise.
Still unsure after reading this?
Ring the desk and we will go through it with you. There is nothing to buy at any stage.