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Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

I'm guessing the median lifespan of an iPad is about 3 years, and 95% of them will reach their end of life in about 6 years.

So, we are talking about, on average, 7.2 GBytes of wireless data, 14 Gigabytes on the outside - spread over a number of years, and, at 200 MBytes/month, very low impact to their LTE networks.

Of course, nowadays, 200 MBytes lasts the average LTE user about 3-4 days, even if they are trying to be conservative.

I'm guessing there will be a lot of upselling ot bigger data packages.

What is cool about this, though - no contract, and you don't even have to be a TMobile customer.

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You've also got to figure that the Cellular data is basically a backup, really.

I'm not generally that mobile with my iPad, but even if I were, I'd have a hard time imagining less than 99% usage on WiFi vs. Cellular.

Of course, YMMV, but it seems like they're basically giving away 'emergency data' as a sales pitch, and yes, likely for the opportunity to upsell a real plan.

It's a fantastic way to get people to buy the T-Mobile version (well I don't know how much data I use, but maybe it's under 200MB/mo) and then upsell them to a plan after 4 YouTube videos.

Plus you can pull this out of your advertising budget, and the marginal cost of the infrastructure use is pretty much zero, at least until T-Mobile's subscriber numbers go up rather substantially.

Yes. Your point is fair and true. But I think as people begin to realize their data usage is going up, they will reluctant to use data usage if they could just use wifi. But on the other hand, free 200MB is good enough for a lot of normal browsing.

My phone has 200MB data and I can barely use up every month even though I read HN like at least 2-3 times a week. And it's easier if I can use data plan on the go when wifi is not a option.

edit and I think it would be interesting to see study on how much mobile version benefits users over regular desktop version of an web app.

> My phone has 200MB data and I can barely use up every month even though I read HN like at least 2-3 times a week.

Meanwhile mine has 2GB and I generally use 80~90% of it.

Well, do you use leave it on for a long time? I generally use 2-3 times a week on the phone, at most 30 minutes. I do occasionally browse a couple Youtube video (short one though). I usually end up with 50MB~100MB.

This is definitely one of those "everyone is different" situations.

I know people who have an expensive unlimited data plan (usually because they got the iDevice for nothing if they signed up for it, not bothering to work out that they could buy the device for 9-months of what the 24 month contract costs) and probably only use a couple of hundred Mb of it because they are on home or public wireless most of the time. They are the sort of people I see benefiting from this unless the price is significantly higher than the standard Apple price for the same device.

I'm on a plan that gives me 1.5Gb. Despite being a fairly heavy user a lot of my use is also over WiFi. Many months I use no more than 0.5Gb, but when I'm out and about more I sometimes get close to the full 1.5.

Conversely I know someone who blows through several Gb every month without fail. To be honest I'm not entirely sure how given his lifestyle (from a technology PoV at least) isn't particularly different to mine, but it shows that one size certainly does not fit all.

> To be honest I'm not entirely sure how given his lifestyle (from a technology PoV at least) isn't particularly different to mine, but it shows that one size certainly does not fit all.

Might just be that he doesn't use much wifi for some reason. Because of my pretty high data cap, I've never bothered to setup a wifi AP in my flat, my computers are all wired so the AP would mostly be useful for the phone, which can generally use 3G/LTE.

My 99 RMB/month ChinaUnicom plan comes with only 300 MB a month. Since YouTube is blocked anyways, its plenty for email and basic web surfing.

you been robbed. there is a plan with 2.6G, only 50RMB/month.

Mine also comes with voice. For Unicom, it's an ok deal, and I have a few add ons like international roaming on top of that.

I'm wondering how badly throttled the free users will become over time.

Why throttle them? Let them hit the caps and pay for more data.

They're probably expecting some phone plan converts as well. Smart.

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