Mobile Data Usage Stats: Savvy Users Get Savvier

        
New data that was published recently shows a significant increase in mobile data usage (per subscriber), with higher growth by the top users.

  

Data from Validas shows the difference between the average and median data consumption in US 4 major wireless providers - AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-mobile. While the average consumption is in the range of 345-430MB/Month, the median consumption is about 25% of that (half of the subscribers consume 80-134MB/Month, see charts below).

As a result, about 60% of the subscriber base consumes less than 200MB/month, so they can use the lower level of the usage-based billing data plans.

See "Unpacking Data Plans: Do They Fit Your Use? Maybe, If You Squeal Like a Data Hog…" - here.

Don Kellogg, Senior Manager, Telecom Research & Insights, Nielsen provides a more granular view of the distribution of data usage among smartphone users:

"mobile Data Tsunami initially described here is still growing at an astounding pace In just the last 12 months, the amount of data the average smartphone user consumes per month has grown by 89 percent from 230 Megabytes (MB) in Q1 2010 to 435 MB in Q1 2011. A look at the distribution of data consumption is even more shocking: data usage for the top 10 percent of smartphone users (90^th percentile) is up 109 percent while the top 1 percent (99^th percentile) has grown their usage by an astonishing 155 percent from 1.8GB in Q1 2010 to over 4.6GB in Q1 2011 .. Even as data usage has almost doubled, most users are paying around what they did a year ago for data. That translates to a lower cost per unit of data consumed.  The amount the average smartphone user pays per unit of data has dropped by nearly 50 percent in the last year, from 14 cents per megabyte (MB) to a mere 8 cents".

See "Average U.S. Smartphone Data Usage Up 89% as Cost per MB Goes Down 46%" - here.



Source: Validas





Source: Validas





Source: Nielsen



Nielsen: "The top 6% smartphone users are consuming half of all data"

    

A common say by broadband operators (and DPI vendors) is that x% (usually 5%) of broadband subscribers consume yy% (usually 50%) of total traffic (like here and here). Without un-biased hard data, this was so far just a common argument to justify traffic management - like saying "these abusers take it all from the silent majority".

In addition, when mobile operators are moving to usage-based billing (see - AT&T, Verizon, O2 UK) they usually say something like "Currently, 98% of AT&T smartphone customers use less than 2 GB of data a month on average" - i.e. moving to unlimited data is good for you, Mr. consumer. Some challenge this - see an example here.

Nielsen Wire has just published some findings on US smartphone usage, showing percentile information.

See the chart below and the article - "Quantifying the Mobile Data Tsunami and its Implications" - here. 

The data comes from real phone bills ("from more than 60,000 mobile customers every month") and Q1 of 2010 shows an increase of 230% (!)  in the average data consumption. In 2010, the top 6% consumed 50% of all data.

According to Nielsen - "99% ..  are better off with a pricing scheme like AT&T’s new data pricing model than under flat-rate pricing where they are paying for much more than they ever use.". This confirms AT&T claims.

So I wonder why AT&T is doing this - maybe they expect this 230% yearly growth to continue .. (see "AT&T CTO: Traffic has Grown 5,000% in 3 Years" - here).