If a plan is marketed as truly unlimited such as the offering from Three, what sprt of use would you call excessive?

Personally I'd say around 25GB.

I would have to agree around that mark never used more than 18GB in one month and I would class that as high usage

Yeah i'd agree with those figures

Unlimited should mean... unlimited.

Excessive really just depends on your standards and perceptions. Personally I'd say 95th percentile usage or more would be "excessive".

Back in the old days Orange had a "Unlimited" web browsing add-on with a 5MB/month fair use policy...

lol nobody could possibly put a number on it.

One persons ''excessive'' might be 1 or 2 days usage for someone else lol

I've seen evidence of people using over 350GB per month on a fairly regularly basis on Three.

I'd say thats excessive.

Torrents i presume...

ok thats just silly, to get that much in a month you'd literally have to have the phone permanently plugged into a power source and using the net 24/7

The phone companies should have set a limit if they want a limit. If you tell people unlimited they should be able to have as much as they want. Saying that some people do go over the top but it is their right.

How can you be accused of being excessive on an UNLIMITED plan!!

If a mobile company doesnt want people using more than 1,5,25,100,1000,1000000 GB/mins/texts then set a LIMIT.

It really isnt rocket science!!!

But then you have to pay when you go over the limit

It's difficult to put an exact figure on it. Video eats bandwidth like a hot knife through butter, so id say anything over about 59.1 GB a month is excessive.

I used only about 27.5 GB in my first month on the One Plan.

I'm on an Orange iPhone Extra 51 Loy plan with Unlimited Data, calls text with no fair usage policy on any of them (think the fair usage on calls and text was 3000 normally, data was 3GB)

I've used 30GB in a month tethering watching a bunch of YouTube HD, backing up stuff on Dropbox, gaming and web browsing.

Unlimited should be unlimited. I'm moving to a 50GB EE plan. I at least KNOW it's 50GB though.

I'd say probably around 5-10 GB, considering the average smartphone user uses less than 2 GB.

It all depends on what you're doing I guess.

For some people, being able to reach 18GB would be near impossible based on what they do - like web browsing, getting emails and maybe streaming some short videos on YouTube.

But if you install Netflix, Sky Go or start using iPlayer, TV Catchup etc then suddenly you can use immense amounts of data without going crazy or seemingly wishing to abuse the network.

One film could be 1-2GB, so if you're really into movies then it won't take long. And TV series', or watching a football match live...

I expect that while a lot of people won't use much data, as time goes on more and more people will - and go from pretty low users to high users simply because they've now got a new smartphone with a big screen and have found the apps that let them stream (Netflix, Sky Go, Now TV, Netflix etc etc).

And I guess people who use Extreme quality on Spotify could also use a fair bit of data there too, although nowhere near the same as with video.

For me, if it says unlimited then that's what it should be. If a network wishes to restrict my data speed to manage demand, so be it. However, I don't fancy being cut off for reaching a limit that someone else has decided on the day, and may change at any time (and was never mentioned).

Rather than offer "unlimited" Offer 25GB tethered or untethered. That will satisfy 99% of users and thwart the 1% using 1000000s of GBs

Unlimited should mean unlimited frankly. The way the ASA lets phone companies apply FUP and so on is frankly a cop out. Its obvious providing unlimited data on any mobile network in the long run isn't sustainable at least for tethering. In that sense providers should be more up front and actually implement restrictions. I don't see a problem with AYCE or Unlimited data if it is just handset based, it naturally becomes a problem when tethering is involved. Handsets are not constantly downloading data, its more burst based compared to that of tethering which maintains a constant connection.

Its really difficult to quantify whats too much for one person maybe an average months use for someone else, however like jabbamk1 said if people are going through 350Gb a day then it's pretty obvious that is not regular web browsing, youtube, music etc.

I am lucky I get good 3G speeds at home of a minimum of 10mbit to a max of 25mbit and although it's pretty stable I would not in one moment think about dropping my VM 120mb connection just to save some money.

For me the people who should be capped would be who use it as a BB replacement when they HAVE a perfectly capable telephone line or cable installed and tethering 24/7 365 which has a detrimental effect on everyone else in the surrounding area.

Personally speaking I would like to see sim only tariffs capped at 2gb tethering as these are going to be the far most popular choice and not a 24 month agreement.

Three is making a step in the right direction and if they can provide a good consistent experience for all users then a loss of unlimited tethering is by no means a bad thing.

It's people that are taking the piss that ruin it for ordinary consumers .

Unfortunately it's human nature and if someone can pay £15 a month for unlimited data and tethering then it's really open to abuse.

Hopefully if these users get their speed capped right down they may stop tethering as it's simply not possible to keep on using it for whatever they are doing.

my s2 uses around 3 gig a month
guess a lot is because i use radio streaming lol

This 'unlimited should mean unlimited' comes up all the time and there are good reasons why it should not be the case.

Principally that most people do not have a clue what a gigabyte is. the term is meaningless to them. you could tell them they have 100GB or 1GB and they would be non the wiser.

what people want to know is that they can use their phone as much as they like and not be charged.

when people say 'unlimited should mean unlimited' i guess they think they would get unlimited internet. it's unlikely that this would be the way it would go. the term would be dropped. and there would be a limit. those of you using 50GB would have to pay £400pcm and your mum wouldn't have a clue how much data she could use.

the only reason people using 20, 30, 50GB can get away with it is because three know your mum wants to hear the word unlimited and the price they are willing to pay to tell her that is is to let you use their network to the tune of 100 average users. drop that loophole and you would have to pay the price of 100 average users.

to anyone who says 'unlimited should mean unlimited' i ask what is the benefit and to whom?

The real benefit for unlimited is not being surprised by run-on charges because you didn't have a clue how big a music file or video was, especially now that you're streaming and have no visual indication of the size compared to downloading an AVI or whatever.

And as I've said, someone might use virtually no data at the moment but then sign up for Netflix and get rather addicted, and suddenly start consuming loads of data (which they won't even know or care about).

If they have a hard limit, like EE, no major problem - bar the shock and disappointment of being told the data has run out a few hours in to a 30 day monthly cycle!

If they have no limit, that's obviously ideal.

But if the data is used up and then charged at nn pence per meg from then on, that's going to cause big problems.

And being suspended or cut off because an operator decided that 'today' the limit is nn GB will also cause problems.

So unlimited is either totally unlimited, or it's not advertised as such.. and then the best option is a hard limit like EE, or perhaps the other way of doing things which is to slow users down significantly once the limit is reached - and then invite people to buy additional data to get the speed restored.

With regards to Three's 2GB tethering cap, users can buy another gig for £5. Not particularly cheap, but at least users won't be unable to use tethering for the rest of the month. Unlike Three's 15GB mobile broadband contract where you literally can't use ANY data until the next month. A totally crazy situation that saw my parents (who use that for business) have to get a PAYG SIM to stay online until it renewed.

I use my phone alot for the radio and google music to and from work for around 2 hours a day, google music set to high quality and watch f1 races on sky go if I'm working and I use around 5-6gb a month on average.. I say a soft limit of 20gb should be put in place for normal unlimited use, after that the user should be restricted to 1 or 2mbps during the daytime. To many people abusing things at the moment, downloading lots of torrent stuff, clogging the network for others and needs to be stopped,
Don't really agree with 3's latest answer though, everyone gets punished for the few via traffic management as it limits all users alike in congested areas, and the new 2gb teathering limit is overly harsh for everyone thanks to the few using vast amounts of data and connecting multiple devices on one have for long periods.

Used 50gb+ this last month, due to house move and no broadband/ hotel living for a month. ps3 ps plus game downloads mostly.

It is unusual usage and my first serious tethering since getting the one plan 8 months ago, but it was for times like this that I moved to the one plan. I probably wont use 2gb a month again anytime soon.