Question from Debby G.: A couple of months ago I bought my first smartphone.
I absolutely love it, but I got a huge bill yesterday because they said I went over my monthly data allotment by several gigabytes.
I do watch a lot of videos every day, but I didn’t realize it would cause me to be charged extra.
My daughter said I need to use Wi-Fi instead of 4G but I don’t want to get hit with a big bill for that too.
My daughter said using Wi-Fi is free, but I want to be sure since I can’t afford another huge bill.
So will I be charged extra if I use Wi-Fi to watch my videos?
Rick’s answer: Your daughter is right Debby. Switching your phone over to Wi-Fi whenever possible will help prevent you from exceeding your monthly data limit.
Unless you have a satellite Internet connection or some other Internet plan with a ridiculously low monthly data limit you won’t go over your data allotment with that service either.
In general, there’s no charge for data that’s sent or received via Wi-Fi unless the entity providing the Wi-Fi service (typically some hotels, restaurants and other public venues) charges a fee for using their wireless network.
In a nutshell, using the Wi-Fi signal from your own wireless router and/or free public Wi-Fi connections should allow you to watch your streaming videos without having to pay anything extra.
4G is really nice and it’s very convenient, but as you now know it can end up being quite expensive if you go over your monthly cellular data allotment.
Bottom line: Wi-Fi is free as far as your phone’s data plan is concerned, so feel free to use it all you want!
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