How accurate is PTCL's Usage Data?

[namsu99]

Hey guys!

As the title says, how accurate is the usage monitoring system or whatever PTCL uses to calculate the data a customer uses?

I ask this because I have a 4Mbps Starter Package installed (which has a usage limit of 40GB) at my relative's place and I've been getting billed ridiculous amounts!

I mean, just this month, their system says we've used up 39GB in the first 7 days of March - which is impossible.
For comparison, my personal usage on my laptop on Transworld is 45GB right now (13th of March). I refuse to believe my elderly relatives used up more data on their phones (there's just 2 phones on that connection) in one week than I did on my laptop in a fortnight!

The network is pretty secured - its hidden so only pre-configured devices can connect to it so there's no chance of having a freeloader on the network.

 

[murtaza12]

Hey guys!

As the title says, how accurate is the usage monitoring system or whatever PTCL uses to calculate the data a customer uses?

I ask this because I have a 4Mbps Starter Package installed (which has a usage limit of 40GB) at my relative's place and I've been getting billed ridiculous amounts!

I mean, just this month, their system says we've used up 39GB in the first 7 days of March - which is impossible.
For comparison, my personal usage on my laptop on Transworld is 45GB right now (13th of March). I refuse to believe my elderly relatives used up more data on their phones (there's just 2 phones on that connection) in one week than I did on my laptop in a fortnight!

The network is pretty secured - its hidden so only pre-configured devices can connect to it so there's no chance of having a freeloader on the network.

The counter is absolute bogus. It ALWAYS has been.

I had to download the entire stock ROM for my phone once. It's a 4 GB file, and I downloaded like 3 different ones in 1 day. So that's 12 GB just there.
That's only my laptop. There are 6 other people in the house with multiple devices.

In the end, the usage shown on my bill was 8.7 GB, when the usage of that month easily exceeded 200 GB.

 

[gullfounder]

Measuring accurate data is near impossible. Its always approximation. Its accuracy can be said to be around 95%. other 5% can be sending error packets, info packets error corrections and so on and. Regarding Mobile usage it can get too much if they use to watch a lot of videos. not to mention the whatsapps groups video which just keep coming and coming. Torrent client running in background can take alot of bandwidth too. even if nothing is downloading on it.

Regarding PTCL, in my experience i found them to be decently accurate.

 

[greyfreak19]

I mean phones update applications and send and receive a lot of data in the background. From backups to updating all those apps on their phones I'd say there is a pretty good chance that high usage numbers can happen. My family on a 4mb package get an avg monthly usage of about 250-400gb.

 

[masters1001]

I have also noticed that for many months it used to come around 40 GB printed on my Bill but i used more. I am using DU meter but it would not be accurate as well but still there should not be that much difference. Even when my usage used to be above 100 GB as per DU meter or the torrents I downloaded but still bill used to say around 40 GB. If PTCL cannot give the accurate consumed volume then they should stop this service instead of showing incorrect info to their customers.

Last month for the first time i got usage above 100 GB printed on the bill i.e. 180.5 GB . I do used above 100 GB last month but not that much.

Thanks

 

[Voodoo]

same here ... usually data usage around 45 GB but now getting around 90~100 GB

I Guess -again just a guess- that PTCL is preparing a ground to Charge extra if the usage exceeds certain limit, say 100 GB or so ... as the 1st step they are preparing customers mentally to accept such huge data usage then the rest will be easy for PTCL ..

 

[Aciel]

PTCL Usage only shows your surfing, video, gaming etc bandwidth, no torrenting bandwidth at all. This is how it's been for me from the start. I was using torrent a lot before for everything and PTCL Bill only showed like ~45GB, now I'm torrenting & streaming directly on my RPi3 Kodi and now Bill shows like ~200GB

Sent from my OnePlus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[puppet]

PTCL Usage only shows your surfing, video, gaming etc bandwidth, no torrenting bandwidth at all. This is how it's been for me from the start. I was using torrent a lot before for everything and PTCL Bill only showed like ~45GB, now I'm torrenting & streaming directly on my RPi3 Kodi and now Bill shows like ~200GB

Sent from my OnePlus 5 using Tapatalk

lol happened same here , for 2 months my usage jumped from 80-90 GB to 170-190 GB

 

[Soka]

It is accurate if you are on limited volume package .if you are on unlimited package then it is not accurate

 

[namsu99]

UPDATE:

Last month, PTCL's records show we used up 109GB. There's only two phones on the god damn network and the usage is just casual facebook browsing!
Before January, the average monthly usage would stay between 7-9GB.

I tried to explain this to them but obviously my complaints landed on deaf ears.

Anyway, I'm getting rid of PTCL. Its been long overdue.

 

[namsu99]

I mean phones update applications and send and receive a lot of data in the background. From backups to updating all those apps on their phones I'd say there is a pretty good chance that high usage numbers can happen. My family on a 4mb package get an avg monthly usage of about 250-400gb.

Do you mean to say that two phones with facebook and whatsapp managed to download/upload 109GB of data in one month?

I'm on my phone all the time; I stream YouTube at 1080p, use deezer for songs, Whatsapp and facebook regularly and do whatever you would expect from a mid-heavy user. Despite that, the max data that my phone has used up till date is around 25GB.

Do you still think it is possible for 2 elderly people who only use their phones for facebook and whatsapp can collectively download/upload 109GB in 1 month?

 

[greyfreak19]

Do you mean to say that two phones with facebook and whatsapp managed to download/upload 109GB of data in one month?

I'm on my phone all the time; I stream YouTube at 1080p, use deezer for songs, Whatsapp and facebook regularly and do whatever you would expect from a mid-heavy user. Despite that, the max data that my phone has used up till date is around 25GB.

Do you still think it is possible for 2 elderly people who only use their phones for facebook and whatsapp can collectively download/upload 109GB in 1 month?

when you put it that way... NO. But, I wasn't talking about whatsapp and whatnot, I was referring to the background app updates and the automatic backups that happen in the background. But, again, measuring data isn't always accurate and PTCL doesn't have the rep of doing everything correctly anyways... I wouldn't trust them with this either.

Because of this, I will now on monitor my bandwidth usage for the next 30days (Not because I have to but because of SCIENCE... and proving how shit PTCL is at everything.)

How so? First, I'll wipe the data usage of my own pc and phone and after that I have a custom firmware on my router and it has a package installed that lets me control and see my bandwidth at will. I can use that for my monthly data usage as it is pretty accurate... there can be difference in the end result b/w my measured usage and what comes on the bill about ~10% is a good guess. And to compare the data on the router I can compare my devices usage on the router to the usage windows and ios shows me (This should be more close in numbers).

Although... I do admit my bill showing me ~350gb data usage per month on 4mb is a lil bit bogus... but it might not be that far off :/

You can try and contact ptcl on the issue... preferably @ptclcares on twitter.

Edit:
From april 3rd till today... my usage has bee 207GB with the first 2 days of the month not being recorded... going by the avg data usage per day it would've been ~20gb so that would set my final usage to ~250gb in like 15days.
Apart from one andriod device in my house consuming 30gb data from april 3rd till today... the other devices have been in the neighbourhood of 1-5gb (This is probably my parents devices, my brothers phone and my own device which are only used for day to day tasks e.t.c).

5-10gb per device is a more or less is my best guess what your relatives would've been getting with day to day moderate usage in a month.