A month working from the States consumes more than the same month in Europe, and the reason is not what people expect.
A month working from the United States is a common enough arrangement now — a longer visit built around family, a change of scene, or a project that needs some overlap with American hours. The data question is different from a European long stay, and in one specific way that catches people out.
The thing that is different
Public and semi-public Wi-Fi in the United States is more variable than the European equivalent in the places you would actually use it. Coffee shops, libraries and shared spaces are patchier, and short-let accommodation Wi-Fi varies from excellent to unusable with no way to tell in advance.
On a two-week holiday that is a minor irritation. Over a working month it means a meaningful share of your working traffic lands on your mobile plan rather than on Wi-Fi, and that is the whole difference in the calculation.
So is 100GB enough
For most people, yes, with room to spare — provided you have a Wi-Fi connection you trust where you are staying.
The pattern that consumes it is specific: daily video calls on the mobile plan, a tethered laptop working full days, and continuous cloud file sync. Someone doing all three from a place with poor Wi-Fi will get through a large allowance in a month, and should be looking at the top of the ladder rather than the middle.
Someone with reliable accommodation Wi-Fi, using the mobile plan for travel days, coffee shops and the occasional call, will use a fraction of it.
THE QUESTION TO ASK BEFORE YOU BOOK
For a short-let, ask the host to run a speed test and send you the result. Not "is there fast Wi-Fi", which is always yes.
For a month of working, the connection is a piece of equipment you are renting alongside the room, and it is entirely reasonable to ask about it in those terms.
What a working month actually looks like
Video calls are the largest single item, by a wide margin. An hour can use more than a day of ordinary browsing.
Tethering a laptop multiplies everything, because a laptop’s background traffic is larger than a phone’s — system updates, cloud sync, and applications that assume an unmetered connection.
Cloud file sync runs continuously whether you are working or not, and is the item people most often forget entirely.
Ordinary work — email, documents, messaging — is negligible next to the above.
Travel days
A month in the States usually involves internal travel, and those days consume more than working days: navigation for hours, airport and roadside connectivity, and no Wi-Fi worth using at either end. If your month includes several internal flights or a road trip section, add allowance for it rather than assuming the working weeks are the heavy part.
One plan, not four
The same arithmetic as any long stay: one plan covering the whole period costs less per gigabyte than four weekly ones, and there is nothing to remember mid-trip. The renewal you forget is always the one on the morning of an important call.
Our long-stay USA plans run to 100GB over 90 days starting at $69.90.
Calls and your usual number
Worth thinking about properly for a month rather than a week. The travel plan carries data only; your usual number stays on the phone and continues to work under your own network’s roaming terms — which for the United States are usually the expensive ones.
For a month, use internet calling for anything routine and keep your usual number for the things that must arrive on it: banks, verification codes, and anyone who will not use anything else.
Set-up
At home, before you fly, as always. For a long stay, also check what happens as the plan approaches its end so the renewal is not a discovery.
