Discrepancies in Mobile Data Usage Calculation

Name of Complainant Santosh Kumar Sahoo
Date of ComplaintAugust 23, 2020
Name(s) of companies complained against
Category of complaint Internet Services
Permanent link of complaint Right click to copy link
Share your complaint on social media for wider reach
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail
Text of Complaint by Santosh Kumar Sahoo:

I use a mobile data plan of 2 GB everyday. Since it is prepaid, there is no data carry forward feature and everyday at midnight i.e. 00:00 the data counter is reset to 2 GB.

However, I am facing an issue with my Airtel sim. In the night, whenever I am continuously browsing and it crosses midnight(00:00), the data that I had consumed earlier is calculated as a part of the next day.

Example:

I started watching a live class starting from 10:00 PM(22nd August). There were certain breaks of 5-10 mins but it was mostly continuous. I ended the 1 hr 40 mins video by 00:08 AM(23rd August). It took longer because I had to pause in between for making notes.
Now, when I checked the data balance it is showing as 1.5 GB left out of 2 GB. It is quite obvious that for the period 00:00 to 00:08 AM, 500 MB was not used because it was the same video running and no changes were made to the video quality, which was 540 pixels.
What I want to say is that, The data calculation is done over a session and not on a real time basis.
e.g. If I am using data of 150 MB within 10 mins, then data used is calculated at the end of 10 mins and not at the end of every second, which will be realtime.

I am facing this issue almost everyday. I sent mail to Airtel but they are giving strange reasons that in 4G, the data consumption will be more.

On August 20, 2020, I was watching videos since 23:20 and I stopped watching videos by 23:55.

After that I browsed 2 or 3 webpages and no videos and turned the net off at around 00:18 AM but by 00:19, I received a message that my 1 GB was consumed for August 21.

I encountered the same issue for Aug 22-23. My own device was showing data consumption of 111 MB but in reality, Airtel deducted nearly 500 MB from my data balance. There can be a discrepancy of 10-20 MB but 400 mb!!!!

Image Uploaded by Santosh Kumar Sahoo:

Discrepancies in Mobile Data Usage Calculation

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *