While you don’t want to miss your favourite and relevant content, you also don’t want to be swept away by excessive data charges. That being the case, what can you do to ensure you are not killed with excessive mobile data charges while browsing online for priceless information? This brings us to the subject on point.
Alright, let’s say I’m also a reader, just like you, I turn to online resources for good information and most of these are hosted on websites but it always sucks to walk my way through internet pages while browsing! These steps will help you to cut down on your mobile data charges as in my case.
Use modern browsers optimized for speed browsing
Employ a browser that loads a low amount of data, speeds up browsing and downloads. Typical examples of such browsers, used by a wide range of mobile users are; Chrome, Opera and UC Web (UC Browser). The latest versions of these mobile web browsers for Android systems and other platforms employ speed browsing and built-in Adblockers to ensure a good user experience while browsing.
You can download and (or) configure them (if you have one installed already). These browsers will block all irrelevant Ads and ensure your data usage is minimized. In their settings panel, you can view the number of Ads blocked and the amount of data saved. This is a good way to minimize your mobile data charge.
Employ third party Adblockers
If your browser has a built-in ad blocker, turn it on when browsing websites with excessive ads and poorly implemented ad displays but not on all websites. NB: the best content you get from websites are created and published by well-meaning people. Some websites, like ours, rely on advertising to earn and pay for hosting and website maintenance. Please help them by turning off ad blockers specifically on such websites. You can do this by whitelisting the web address (URL) of such websites.
Most of these Ad blockers can be configured with specific supported browsers―they work in the background to block Ads during page loads―helping to reduce your mobile data charges. Click here to see some of the best android Ad blocker apps and browsers directly on the Google Playstore.
What and when to download
The type of content and the time of the day when you download can affect your data charges. It isn’t that the time of the day will either increase or decrease your data charges, but traffic sessions. There are times in the day where web traffic is higher than normal and this results in slower browsing. A slower browsing results in a slower rate of download and that triggers higher data charges. It is proven that downloading in late nights where web traffic is low results in faster loading and reduces data charges to some extent.
I usually buy and use midnight bundles which are cheaper and come with big data. If you’re a night person, you can move your downloads and projects to the night and stick to social media during the day.
Porsh, from Ghana
Check the design of the websites you visit
Make sure to visit websites with responsive layouts. They are mostly adapted for different screen sizes; desktops, tablets or phones. Scripts that are only needed by desktop browsers are mostly not loaded on mobile browsers, thereby saving page load time and saving mobile data transfer which in effect saves costs. (Continue reading on the next page)
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