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> prefetching can be harmful to the user’s wallet when she is on a limited or pay-per-byte cellular data plan

Sure, but if you are not on a limited or pay-per-byte data plan, then prefetching a large block block of data so the radio can go into low power mode for a while is more helpful.

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From the abstract,

> This decision is made based on whether the user is on Wi-Fi or cellular, how many bytes are remaining on the user’s data plan, ...

so it sounds like your scenario is already accounted for and you'd be flagged as a "data-heavy" user, for which prefetching would be enabled.

The network layer is not the application programmers problem. I am requesting data because I want to make my application responsive. I should take into account exactly what is a "good" amount to request or what data is most likely to be requested anyways but alot of prefetching has to do with making the first load faster. So if you decide to not prefetch then many applications will force the download on the first request... Im not concerend with wifi just if the user is connected or not. If they are connected then im trying to make the resource fetching as efficient as possible which will scale from wifi and up.

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