> According to a recent consumer report (pdf) commissioned by networking hardware company Ericsson, the average smartphone owner in the US currently uses around 8GB of data each month.
Whaaaat? I figured that must include Wifi so I looked at the PDF, and no—apparently that's the actual mobile data usage. It's a self-reported survey, but still. Up here in Canada I have a 10GB plan which is more than anyone else I know, and is way, way more than I generally use. The only time I've ever come close is when I've been on vacation and done a bunch of tethering.
I'm not surprised that some people use 8GB per month, but I find it very hard to believe that's anywhere close to a national average, unless usage in the US is dramatically different than in Canada. (I know our cell plans are more expensive so it's probably somewhat different, but that much?)
The average web page that an Indian mobile user is downloading is CERTAINLY not 2.2 MB. You can't just take a statistic from desktop US-centric sites and generalize it to other nations and usage patterns. Keep in mind that a lot of the advantages of bringing mobile phones and mobile Internet to developing nations is simple text communication -- 500 MB is essentially an unlimited number of texts through apps like WhatsApp.
And anyway, I am a heavy smartphone user here in the US on a data plan I don't pay for (i.e. I never think twice about accessing anything on my phone), and I average 2-3 GB per month, most of which is mobile games (Ingress and Pokemon Go) and viewing images and videos on Reddit. I could easily make do on 500 MB/month if I had to, and the only thing that would be affected is entertainment.
> Non-mobile devices can generate a higher volume of data than a mobile device alone. You can go eat at an all-you-can-eat buffet, but they don't let you bring a wheelbarrow with.
The link shows a graph demonstrating that while data usage has gone up each year, smartphones are the majority users of data, while 'Data Capable Units' continue to lag behind.
While you're absolutely right that non-mobile devices (presumably non-smartphones) can (and in many cases do) generate a (much much) higher volume of data than a mobile device (presumably smartphone) alone, the data in the link supplied seems to indicate that as a whole, smartphones continue to be the majority users of data.
Or rather, while a few people may bring in wheelbarrows, few of them are actually filling them up, and the majority of people are just gorging themselves.
>Is excess data usage severely penalized financially in other countries?
I believe it depends on ISP and on specific plan.
My mom has an iPad with a limited to 3 Gb/month dataplan (Italy), a couple of times she managed to go beyond the limit (due to some updates she did when not Wi-Fi connected), since it is a sort of pre-paid account, what happened was that the device became slow as molasses, as bandwidth was reduced to the speed of an analogic modem or something like that.
She still had connection, but to access a web page it took like 3 minutes.
On the other hand, she changed phone from a "normal" phone to a "smart" Android one (she was totally unaware of this and didn't realize that the cellular data was on) but her SIM (also pre-paid) did have an on-demand dataplan (never used before on the old phone), very, very costly and she managed to burn 30 out of 50 € of credit in a couple days (without using the internet at all, just through the "pings" (or whatever) the Android did in background).
I didn't fully read the article but I've got wifi at home, wifi at work, wifi at uni. My phone automatically connects to all of 'm. Hell I've got wifi at some friends, even at the parents of my gf when I stayed over for a weekend.
So most of my data use is not from my phone's data plan. Did she specify it was?
That having been said, 60gb is a shitload and I think 1) it may not be true and 2) she's an outlier who uses snaps for scoring. While undoubtedly more people do that, most young people I know send a few snaps a day at most, not 40 over breakfast.
Thats less than a workday's worth of use at a desktop computer. And you're telling me that's the limit for a device that relies so heavily on the cloud?
> Most phone plans are unlimited or have data capable of watching movies. On Google's own Fi plan "less than 1% of individual Fi users ... use above 15 GB".
I use Google Fi and I use less than one gigabyte a month: not because I'd like to, but because I don't want to pay for mobile data when I don't have to.
My phone is always on WiFi unless I am in my car driving from place to place. I use under 2GB a month, closer to 1GB most months. I can't even comprehend how you would use 100GB of data on a mobile device in a month. My primary internet consumption is sitting at a computer all day long, or a laptop on the couch. The mobile data is just for traffic, slack, email, and news. All my podcasts are downloaded on WiFi, all my music is as well. There is just no reason for me to use any real amount of data while not on WiFi.
What kills me is that when the ATT spokesman mentions the subscriber percentages in the NYT article (quote and link below), he says "smartphone" and not "iphone".
> With a Snapdragon inside your PC, you'll no longer need Wi-Fi to fetch your latest e-mail and catch up on Twitter. Instead, you'll be able to get online wherever there's cellular connectivity.
I'm not buying the optimism, especially not in the US. The cellular data is still horribly limited. In Canada it is even worse. The "unlimited" plan is surging back, but it has automatic throttling at varying points.
Oh and since we're talking Microsoft and Windows, you can't control data usage. Windows 10 uploads your personal information at unknown intervals and downloads ads and sponsored apps without consent.
What good is faster cell data with horrible data limits and an OS with a poor concept of when data is permissible even in the "Enterprise" edition?
Even if were true that people use their phone more at home than when they are out-and-about, I wonder how much those metrics are skewed by the restrictions of data plans. Companies gouge hard for data, and we've been conditioned to use wifi whenever possible, and avoid those data limits!
The article claimed that the new data plans would cause people to use their phones less. I do not believe this is true, but I do think it will either cause people to use wifi more and cellular data less (if they are heavy data users like the authors) or not make any changes (if they are "normal" users). Nothing in my original writing was meant to suggest that AT&T subscribers with data plans (like myself) should use wifi more.
It's funny to me, reading "as low as 10gb". I used 45MB of data last month, and 9 of that was the Android OS. (And, yes, 4.33GB on wifi, of which 186MB was the OS). I know other people use their phones way more than I do, it's just a different world to me, where data limits are a thing to think about.
I know enough people who's mobile data is both faster and cheaper than their home broadband that I cannot agree to your statement that this is usually a correct assumption.
Whaaaat? I figured that must include Wifi so I looked at the PDF, and no—apparently that's the actual mobile data usage. It's a self-reported survey, but still. Up here in Canada I have a 10GB plan which is more than anyone else I know, and is way, way more than I generally use. The only time I've ever come close is when I've been on vacation and done a bunch of tethering.
I'm not surprised that some people use 8GB per month, but I find it very hard to believe that's anywhere close to a national average, unless usage in the US is dramatically different than in Canada. (I know our cell plans are more expensive so it's probably somewhat different, but that much?)
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