Zoom/TMobile (Important)

General
1

As with many working home because of covid19

When/if cable goes out because of service issues.

I set up in March just in case on emergency.

Our Galaxy s10 with TMobile (post paid) as a hotspot. Which has had to be used once since March.

The lte speed we get is 70 Meg download (impressive)

The very important question is when we run out of lte data.
The T-Mobile plan goes to 3g NOT 2g (unlimited)

So is 3g data good enough to run zoom?

On the phone settings I can not just test 3g data

Choices are
lte,3g,2g
Lte,3g
Or
2g only

Since TMOBILE no longer has 2g that settings just shows no service.

So it comes down to

So is 3g data good enough to run zoom?

Or pay the $15 per month for 6 gig extra lte?

Thanks for help

2

"Zoom recommends an internet speed of 1.5 megabits per second (mbps). If you plan to use Zoom at home, you can test your internet speed by going to http://www.speedtest.net/."

3

Chelle said TMOBILE 3g is just 512kbps. So just 1/2 a Meg
So that would not work.

No way to just turn off 4g lte on phone to get just 3g. I looked and the 3 settings does not include 3g alone. So no way to speed test just the 3g. Without using all the data in the plan

Thanks for the zoom info

Does your information tell you how much data Zoom uses per hour? This information will help us figure out if we need to buy the $15 6 gig add-on.

4

You would multiply megabits per second x 60 seconds x 60 minutes to get megabits per hour.

5

I think zoom uses somewhere between 1gb-2.5gb an hour. It depends on how many is on the call, video quality etc. You might want to disable HD if you are limited with data.

Yes 3g data ia not going to work well. You might be okay on the lowest settings but if this is for work you may have a lot of disruptions. Or it might shrink the screen to manage on lower bandwidth? I've never used zoom so not sure how it handles low bandwidth exactly. It should work fine for audio only.

6

Then divide by 8 to get megabytes per hour.

7

Safe to say TMobile 3g wont work.

Your 1 to 2.5 gig per hour usage seems higher then the 1.5 meg per second speed conversion.

Now finding a conversion calc on internet
1.5 meg per second equals .68 gig
2 gig of data equals almost 3 hours of zoom
6 gig of data equals 8.8 hours of zoom
10 gig of data from your hotspot you suggested is just 14 hours

There is no way of knowing if a zoom call would be an hour or all day.

You would think cable company's. Know people working from home during covid pandemic

Can a non host of a zoom call change the HD settings?

Is it a personal change or is it the room change?

8

Thanks everyone for the help. It will help me make a decision.

One thing for sure 3g data is too slow

9

Had a zoom meeting and it says it used 1.5gb in 5 hours. So a lot less than I originally thought.

10

Could be they've improved on it as opposed to your having been wrong before.

Edit: And come to think of it, your wording doesn't necessarily imply you assume you were wrong before anyway.

11

On what device? (mobile v. laptop) Screen resolution?

Or would data usage per unit time not depend on device and/or screen resolution?

12

Make sure HD is off. You want the lowest settings.

13

It was a laptop. Hd was off. My camera crashed an hour towards the end but it didnt seem to make any difference to data consumption.