Out Of Data

Introduction

I have a SIM-only plan with 6 Gb of data, and I seldom use half of it. This month, I actually ran out, and today, I am out of data. I think the main cause was a weekend in Scotland where I used no wifi at all.

My plan renews next Thursday. That got me thinking of how we consume data, something that we can't see and trust the suppliers that we use what we use.

I can buy a data add-on, 100Mb for £1.50 or 250Mb for £5, yes, you work out the maths. Three 100 Mb would cost me £4.50.

My phone is a Google Pixel 8, and I need it for certain things, but I plan to get through the week without paying for any extra data.

How Is This Going To Go?

I can make calls, receive calls, send and receive texts, and of course, there is a lot of free wi-fi about that I can hook up to, if needs be, I can still record my steps and diabetes readings, and take photos and videos. So it's not like I can't do anything.

In the house, I have wi-fi so it goes when I walk out the door, until I find another hot spot.

I can buy 100 Mb for £1,50 and that got me thinking of how I have worked with data over my life in IT.

Data - We Want More

My work started on mainframes with punch cards and paper tapes, then magnetic tapes, and my first home computer used a cassette for storage and had 3Kb of RAM, that was it.

I wrote a couple of primitive programs, one to play Connect 4, and another to play the recorder, and sold them for £50, but I was not very good at creating games; I was much better at playing them, but only simple ones.

I then got one with a floppy disk and a computer with 64K of memory, until I got my first one with a Hard Disk, which was 10 Mb! To put that into context, that would hold ten minutes of low-quality MP3 music. Remember my £1,50 Upgrade.

In 1990, the mainframe I was working on had a massive 4 Mb of memory.

These were the days before GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces) seeped into business computers, and we all got desktops to replace our terminals.

Our mobile phones have now transformed into handheld computers, and we are talking Gb not Mb or Kb. Unbelievable, I still am flabbergasted at how mobile data works, whether it's radio waves or what.

I can talk, or send messages or pictures to people anywhere in the world, and while I can see how much data text takes up, music and video are obviously using amounts that we could not comprehend thirty years back.

Our mobile phones are only missing the teleport facility and death rays from your average Star Trek Tricorder. Though it seems now the only thing that phones are trying to beat is cameras.

Conclusion

Tomorrow will be my second day without mobile data, though my phone has 128Gb of storage. That is a lot of books, videos and music, and I do use it for recording my ventures into guitar playing and the like.

So even without my mobile data, it is still a very useful device. Like any situation like this, there are usually ways to circumvent the issues.

The worst-case scenario is if I give in and buy some data.

The music is "I Want More" by Can, because, let's face it, we always want more.

Thank you so much for reading and for your continued support.