Comment on What does the word data mean per se ?
Nemo@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
Data is the plural of datum.
A datum is an atom of information, the smallest amount of information that still makes sense.
But in your case, it means “how many bytes we’re willing to transmit to your phone at high speed per month”.
Thorry@feddit.org 1 week ago
Which isn’t true in the strictest sense of the word. With modern phone networks everything is data and the phone is continually both sending and receiving bytes. These don’t count towards the data budget. Usually it’s the amount of data excluding metadata that has been exchanged with the wider internet. Or often even only the amount of data downloaded. These usually exclude all of the overhead and instead focus on actual package contents being transmitted. Now this can get very complicated when looking into stuff like a VPN and compressed data packages.
I’m sure the provider has some technical definition internally of how these metrics are collected and how the accounting works. But this isn’t something they will share with the outside world. There would probably be a legal document somewhere that states they are using industry standard means of collecting those stats. Depending on where you live there might be strict definitions the provider needs to adhere to.
As for the question posted by OP: This is way too vague of a question. If you ask a more specific question, you can receive a better answer. Data is one of those words with a whole bunch of meanings, depending on the context. If you strip the context, you also strip the meaning.