Should known to be metered networks allow periodicsync to be triggered?

[tomayac]

Some operating systems like Windows have the notion of marking Wi-Fi networks as "metered"—which, for example, can be tethered mobile networks, or per-MB hotspots—the idea being that, given a metered network, the operating system would refrain from certain data-hungry operations like downloading updates, synchronizing cloud data, etc. Likewise, mobile phones know when they are on a potentially expensive foreign data-roaming mobile network.

If a user agent is aware of such a network condition, should this have an impact on periodicsync events, which can be expensive from a data consumption point of view?

[mugdhalakhani]

In general, if the usera gent decides it's a bad idea to consume data -- whether because data saver mode is on or the OS detects it's on a meted network, the explainer recommends that periodicsync events SHOULD not be fired.

I'd like to point out the case of India however -- where data is quite economical and people usually want to run data intensive operations even when the device is on a tethered mobile network. Some of these people never connect to WiFi and thus would miss out on the capability if the browser never fired periodicsync events on this type of network.