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Average Cellphone Data Usage Is 145.8 MB Per Month

Posted by Soulskill on from the mostly-to-imdb-and-wikipedia-during-arguments dept.

destinyland writes "For the first time, the majority of cell phones are accessing data services — 53 percent, compared to only 42 percent last year, according to a new study by Validas. And each user downloads an average of 145.8 MB per month (the average was just 96.8 MB per month in 2009). The heaviest users are Verizon smartphone owners, averaging 428 MB per month (338 MB on average for iPhone users). In fact, Verizon users were twice as likely as iPhone users to exceed both 500 MB and 2 GB each month."

12 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Standard deviation by Again · · Score: 3, Informative

    I clicked on the article and couldn't find any mention of standard deviation. Knowing the standard deviation would make statistics like this far more interesting and meaningful.

    1. Re:Standard deviation by compro01 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Presumably they're withholding that information in the actual study which will be released in September.

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    2. Re:Standard deviation by julesh · · Score: 3, Informative

      I clicked on the article and couldn't find any mention of standard deviation. Knowing the standard deviation would make statistics like this far more interesting and meaningful.

      Knowing the distribution might be more helpful. I would intuitively expect this to be exponentially distributed, at which point knowing the standard deviation is actually pointless (one would expect it to approximately equal the mean).

    3. Re:Standard deviation by Timmmm · · Score: 2, Informative

      Knowing the standard deviation would make statistics like this far more interesting and meaningful.

      Only if it is normally distributed, which is very unlikely.

  2. Re:Somehow this tells... by h4rr4r · · Score: 2, Informative

    I have a droid and have full flash, the rest of the droid folks will have it next week.

  3. Verizon teathering by Nemilar · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm in the 500M to 1G camp, and I'm on Verizon. The only reason my data usage is so high is because Verizon offered to give me the "mobile hotspot" feature free for life (a little app on my phone that acts as a gateway and gives me a wireless access point which then routes out to 3G). I use it literally every day, on the train, to connect my netbook to the internet.

    Without the mobile hotspot, I would probably use less than 100M per month. And hey, they gave it to me free!

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    Nemilar http://www.techthrob.com - Visit Me!
  4. Re:Somehow this tells... by Moridineas · · Score: 2, Informative

    I think it probably tells you more about AT&T and tethering (or lack thereof). Of course you CAN tether now, but you have to pay through the nose.

    I've had an iPhone 3gs for about a year. The most data I've used in any month has been ~850mb, with an average of around 250-300mb.

    Most of the time I'm on a wifi network. Some hotels, my workplaces, home, many restaurants, etc. The 850mb was traveling through several states and using the iPhone heavily for mapping, etc.

    I would think I would have trouble using 2gb of data in a month on my iPhone unless I turned off my wifi (which would be stupid to do at home and at work) and like..left yourube videos streaming.

  5. Re:Just over-the-air data counted... by binarybum · · Score: 2, Informative

    exactly. I would use data much more often on my iphone if it actually worked anywhere. instead I find myself looking over the shoulders of my colleagues surfing the net at conferences on their verizon droids while my iphone sits there looking at me reading 'no signal'.

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    ôó
  6. Re:so little? by Nursie · · Score: 2, Informative

    Not just images!

    Take a look at adblock's list of blockable items on some of these sites, the amount of stuff they pull in from different sources is massive.

  7. Verizon TV by meehawl · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, it's the popularity of "V-Cast", Verizon's mobile streaming T services. Verizon and Sprint push a huge quantity of data to their smartphone and featurephone users as plain old TV.

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    Da Blog
  8. Re:Just over-the-air data counted... by jaymz666 · · Score: 2, Informative

    's funny, my android device has plenty of apps for that as well. Yelp, movies, etc.

  9. Re:Just over-the-air data counted... by adolf · · Score: 3, Informative

    Good point! As an iphone user, I often use wifi and AT&T does have a great wifi network. The iphone connects automatically to AT&t wifi networks so it's transparent to to user! AT&T wifi is "free" for iphone users! I think that need to be counted in the data usage, as it is part of the data plan.

    (quotations added)

    Hey, guess what!

    My Motorola Droid also talks to AT&T hotspots*! Should we also include my AT&T Wifi data usage, even though I don't have an iPhone or AT&T phone service?

    Of course not! It's cellular data usage that is being discussed, not overall data usage!

    *: As a Uverse customer, I get "free" access to AT&T's Wifi network when I'm out and about.

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