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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."

4 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).

  2. 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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