Tracking internet usage on Android

This post was written 1 year 11 months 26 days days old, so is a bit old now. Feel free to read and comment on this post, just remember some things change with time and any facts in this post may not be accurate anymore.

3G Watchdog

My HTC Hero, on a T-Mobile contract, comes with “Unlimited Internet*”. But that asterisk at the end then points to a line which states “Subject to fair usage policy”. However, that line doesn’t actually link to anything. Thankfully a quick Google finds the result.

Basically, my “Unlimited Internet” is 3GB. Now I’m not going to go off on a rant about this, especially as the ASA have deemed that as little as 250MB can be regarded as “unlimited”. Indeed, most network providers are supplying 512MB of 1GB limits, so my 3GB is quite good.

But, how to monitor usage?

First of all install the Android App 3G Watchdog – this will track your 3G data usage. You’ll now need to know 2 important pieces of information – your usage cap and what time of the run that cap runs from. In the case of a T-Mobile Android account, this is the aforementioned 3GB and from the 1st of the month (rather than the date on which you started your account).