I had a 10GB bolt on data allowance with my iphone. I used it to tether to my laptop and run my laptop on the internet from the iphone sim card. 10GB was good for extensive browsing, email, skype, yahoo messenger and some downloading. Whilst I think that 10Gb was adequate for that purpose each month, I can imagine it will be a lot tighter on 500MB, which is a fraction of 10GB ( 5%). 500mb per month is "light usage".
Since my wife has arrived in the UK and I do very little Skying and Yahooing and since now I have been getting free wifi at my current address and at work, I reduced my bolt on tariff to the 500mb allowance, which I use only when I am outdoors away from any wifi hotspots. This works well. The below might give you an indication.....
How much mobile phone data do I need?
Some downloads and apps are easier to measure than others. For instance, if app you're about to download is as large as 100 Mb, or even more, it should clearly stated in the app description section, so you can decide if you want download it using your inclusive data package.
However, other functions that are part of your everyday use may consume a varying amount of data and could catch you by surprise.
For instance, some of your emails might have large attachments that may take a lot of data to download, or some webpages may have more video or image content than others, which means they use more data to download.
Vodafone use the following assumptions to calculate how much mobile internet data the following activities could approximately take:
Action: data usage (amount downloadable with a 500MB allowance)
Download a webpage: 100kB (5000 pages) Check your email: approx. 100kB per email (500 000 basic, 1,000 with attachments) Instant message: 100kB per Instant Messenger session (500 hours) Download a document: 100kB per page (5000 pages) Download a song: 5MB per music track (100 songs) Download a photo: 2MB per photo (250 photos) Watch a video: 1000kB per minute of video watching. (1 hour of watching)
From this link...http://www.uswitch.com/mobiles/guide...ta_allowances/
