Eight of the reports in this archive are about mobile networks and the connection underneath them — LTE reaching Apple devices, what the speed of the mobile internet actually depends on, GPS in the car, voice messages over SMSAPI. Every one of them measures the world in megabits per second, and nobody has ever thought in megabits per second.
So this converts. Put in a file size, pick a connection, and get back the two numbers a person actually wants: how long the transfer takes, and how much of a monthly allowance it swallows.
Download time
Transfer time—
Of a 1 GB plan—
Of a 5 GB plan—
The sum, if you would rather do it yourself
Storage is counted in bytes and connections are rated in bits, which is where the confusion starts. Multiply megabytes by eight to get megabits, then divide by the connection speed in megabits per second. That gives seconds. A 1,500 MB download is 12,000 megabits; over a 15 Mbps link that is 800 seconds, or thirteen minutes and twenty seconds.
Why your own result will be worse
The speeds offered above are typical figures for each generation of mobile network, not a claim about any particular operator or any particular spot. What you actually get depends on the signal where you are standing, how many other people are on the same cell, how the server at the far end is feeling, and the overhead of the protocols in between. Read the answer as the best case and expect to do worse.
Allowances
The two percentages compare the file against a 1 GB and a 5 GB monthly allowance, counting a gigabyte as 1,024 megabytes. A figure over 100% means the single file is larger than the whole plan.
Nothing is uploaded anywhere. The arithmetic runs in your browser.