How much data do I need on my MiFi device?

If you'll be using a MiFi (portable WiFi) device to connect tablets at a screening event, it's worth understanding how much data www.cloviflow.com uses.

The answer is straightforward, but does require some background. Note that because all your tablets are connecting to a single MiFi device, it's irrelevant how many tablets you have; what matters is how much data that single MiFi device consumes. This simplifies the calculations and allows us to focus on number of participants you're screening.

What is Data?

Data is measured in gigabytes (GB). You may buy a 4GB plan from Verizon/AT&T which will give you 4 gigabytes of data for that month. This is the same as 4,000 megabytes (MB) of data or 1 million kilobytes (KB). 

How much Data does a typical event use?

Second, when you load a page or watch a Netflix video, you're exchanging bytes and that's how your data is used up. www.cloviflow.com is a website that requires a certain amount of bytes to load so you're spending data on www.cloviflow.com. Below, I outline a typical user experience and how much data is required:

Scenario: Screening 200 participants at an event

Step	Action	Amount of data used
A	Load www.cloviflow.com	1200 KB
B	Login and view Events Page	1097 KB
C	Click Event and load 200 participants	983 KB + 567 KB* *over time chart package is loaded once
D	Search for participant and click on them	7 KB
E	Enter and save Blood Pressure section	2 KB
F	Enter and save Lipid section	2 KB
G	Enter and save BMI section	2 KB
H	View Results	2 KB
I	Send results email and go back to Event	2 KB
	Step D thru I are repeated 200 times. Total data usage:	3400 KB
	Total data usage	7247 KB

So a typical screening event with 200 participants will use about 7,247 KB or about 7.2MB. To play it safe, we can approximate this to 10MB.

Reference Table for Events and Data Usage

Below, we show you approximate usage for a variety of screening events, and how many such events you can run on 4GB plan:

Typical event size	Approximate data usage	How many such events you can run in a month on 4GB plan
50 participants	5MB	800 events per month
100 participants	6MB	667 events per month
200 participants	10MB	400 events per month
500 participants	15MB	267 events per month
2000 participants	40MB	100 events per month

Return-on-investment

To compare how much a data plan will cost you relative to your revenue, suppose your revenue is $20 per screened participant. At 2,000 participants per event and 100 events, this is $4M per month. In that period, you will us 4GB of data. The most expensive data plans run at about $100/month. A data plan comprises 0.0025% of your revenue.

At 50 participants per event, and 20 events, the revenue is $20K per month. You will still pay for 4GB of data at $100/month so a data plan comprises 0.5% of your revenue.