Data Usage by Mode (Online / Hybrid / Offline)

Applies to: PTV Navigator G2 — expected mobile data consumption for each connection mode.

PTV Navigator G2 can run in three modes — online, hybrid, or offline — and each uses a different amount of mobile data. Use this as a rough guide when planning data plans for your fleet.

Both the connection mode and which maps download automatically can be preset fleet-wide using the Preferences Generator. This lets you decide in advance which maps get downloaded onto devices, rather than relying on the on-the-fly download described below for hybrid mode.

At a glance

Note: these are indicative estimates, not hard limits — see each mode below for what specifically drives usage up.

Online mode

Map display, route calculation, and traffic are always fetched live from the server. Typical consumption is around 20 MB/h, ranging 10–50 MB/h depending on usage.

Hybrid mode

Map display comes from the device, provided the relevant map data has already been downloaded and is available on the device; if not, it's fetched from the server instead. Route and traffic come from the server when a connection is available; without one, the route is calculated on the device and cached traffic information is used instead.

Reaching the lower end of the 5–20 MB/h range depends on having maps downloaded in advance over WiFi. If a country hasn't been downloaded beforehand, PTV Navigator G2 builds up its local map memory on the fly, region by region, which uses more data:

1. On app launch — the region around the current GPS location downloads automatically. These are always 100 MB map blocks.
   
2. On route planning — once a route is calculated and navigation starts, the regions the route passes through also download. These blocks are also 100 MB each.
   

If a driver later drives through a region that's already been downloaded, it isn't downloaded again — the map data is reused from local storage for display, while traffic and the route (if there's a connection) still come from the server. Map data is updated regularly by TomTom; if a route passes through an already-downloaded region where an update is available, only the changes are downloaded, not the full 100 MB block again.

Offline mode

Map display and route calculation always happen on the device — only traffic information still comes from the server, which is already reflected in the 1–3 MB/h baseline above. Zooming and panning don't add to this, since the map is rendered entirely from local data. What does push consumption beyond that baseline is the satellite layer, and calculating or recalculating routes often: each calculation triggers a fresh live-traffic fetch, so doing it frequently adds up, even offline.