School holidays are coming to an end and we are often asked ‘where did all my data go?’
This sort of thing can happen very easily, especially when you have kids, teenagers, grandchildren, friends or family staying at home. The faster the broadband connection the more you will find you (or they) will use it.
If one thing stands out, it is streaming videos (for kids it’s currently ‘Minecraft’) on YouTube. This can use a bit of data especially if the video up-scales to high-definition (HD) as it does by default on many devices, particularly iPads. Checking the video quality in the settings and changing the default to a lower definition will save you data and it’s barely noticeable.
Music programmes such as Spotify, and new devices you’ve just purchased which are set to sync all your data automatically to iCloud, are frequent culprits; and downloading a whole series of a TV programme will also knock a hole in your data. People who spend a lot of time gaming can use a lot too.
If you use a wireless access point, we suggest checking it is password protected. If you live in a built-up area and your gear doesn’t have a password, it’s quite possible your neighbours may be connected to it without even realising (yes, it does happen!). Or, even if you do have a password, you may have given it to your neighbours when they were visiting – and they’ve stayed connected! (Yes, that happens too). In any event, we do recommend you set a password and change it whenever you think you need to.
If you’re a Uber customer and your connection is capped you will get plenty of warning by email before it happens. Please let us know if you have changed your email address or if you’d like to add another email address for the data usage notifications.
If you do reach your data cap you will be slowed down to 64Kbps (dial-up speed). At this speed, a number of websites will not work at all so you may think your broadband connection is not working. If you find yourself in this position always check first to see if you are capped. The quickest way to get yourself uncapped is to use our awesome customer portal https://my.uber.nz/ to purchase extra data, and you can do this anytime. You can also change your data plan month by month through the portal – so you can increase it when you have more people in the house, and take it back down again when they go (or go back to school!).
