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Report: Average American Will Use 22GB of Mobile Data Per Month In 2021 (mashable.com) 104

Posted by BeauHD from the interconnected-world dept.
An anonymous reader writes: According to Ericsson's latest Mobility Report, it's predicted that the average American smartphone subscriber will use 22GB of mobile data by the end of 2021. The report shows the explosion of mobile data consumption, with mobile traffic growing 60-percent between 2015 and 2016. It's forecasted that Western Europeans will use about 18GB per month per subscriber, while subscribers in the Asia Pacific region will use up about 7GB per month, even though it will have the largest share of mobile data traffic in 2021. The report claims smartphone subscriptions will overtake non-smartphone subscriptions in the third quarter of 2016. In 2021, 95-percent of all phones in North America will be smartphones. Fast 5G networks, which should start to be commercially deployed in 2020, will be able to handle the increased traffic and reach 150 million subscribers globally by the end of 2021. As for Internet of Things devices, the number of which will quadruple to 16 billion globally by 2021.
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Report: Average American Will Use 22GB of Mobile Data Per Month In 2021 More

Report: Average American Will Use 22GB of Mobile Data Per Month In 2021

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  • Extrapolating (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GrumpySteen ( 1250194 ) on Wednesday June 01, 2016 @08:37PM (#52229961)

    My friend had given birth to 0 kids last month. She had 1 this month. By January of 2021, linear extrapolation shows that she will have over 50 kids.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by no1nose ( 993082 )

      Dang. 50 kids! Gettin' jiggy wid it.

    • Ha! I came here to say something similar.
      I use my phone a fair bit and never go over my 1.5GB quota. As much as the marketers would like us to be streaming HDTV to our phones, I've never ever seen anyone do it. A phone is good for calls and a few casual apps, but most people most of the time won't be using them as PC replacements.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tsqr ( 808554 )

        Same here. My wife and I have the lowest tier Verizon data plan (1GB shared) and haven't exceeded the allotment a single time in four years. But then, neither of us is fond of spending a lot of time hunched over a tiny screen watching video.

    • I find it hard to believe people in the USA will ever get to 22GB / month. It will be a very slow climb - since AT&T and Verizon will slow everyone down - traffic growth will be unable to achieve this rate due to the high-pass filters. They just won't allow it - or will complain that customer use to much data !!!

      Let's see - 22GB plan is what.... $2,500 / month? + $45 for each device I want to use.

    • Fitting to two points give a silly result, therefore all extrapolation is worthless.

  • So that's how they're doing it (Score:3)

    by John Smith ( 4340437 ) on Wednesday June 01, 2016 @08:47PM (#52230005)
    Extreme overcharge fees. No wonder the provider lock in scam is so profitable! Google,please design Android to be impossible to vendor lock. It's in your interest you know.

  • Sounds about right (Score:5, Funny)

    by scunc ( 4201789 ) on Wednesday June 01, 2016 @08:52PM (#52230031)
    And 20 GB of that will be from ads!

    • Re:Sounds about right (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CanadianMacFan ( 1900244 ) on Wednesday June 01, 2016 @09:02PM (#52230067)

      And another 1GB from Facebook tracking.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Data is everything a mobile phone sends and receives. So a video phone call is a data sent and data received. As growth in video phone calls increase, so will recording and sending videos, rather than sending a photo, with a corresponding surge in data traffic.

        • Data is everything a mobile phone sends and receives. So a video phone call is a data sent and data received.

          What? No. When people talk about mobile data, they're talking about what goes across the IP network, not the cellular call data.

        • I was making a satirical comment on the state of how we let big companies track our movements online. Obviously it wouldn't take 1GB of 22GB and it wouldn't just be Facebook (I'm looking at you "Don't be evil" Google).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )

      Curse you, good sir! I came here to post the exact same thing!

  • How much will be marketing and bad JS? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How much of that data downloaded will be excessive advertising or obtrusive javascript files?

  • I'm way below average

  • ...my daughter uses that much now.

  • One can purchase will be 20GB requiring most to pay extra for the 2GB most need.

  • I usually run 1-10 gigs per month on my unlimited plan but they finally got around to charging me that extra $20/month on my last cycle. Since they increased my bill, I'm not going to put up with the crappy service I get at my house. In the evening, I barely get 3G speeds (tho I have an LTE connection and usually get 60-80ms pings). I used to just connect to my cable service when I'm at home but, if they're going to charge me more, I'm going to demand more. No more offloading to WiFi. And the only way

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sims 2 ( 994794 )

      How is the signal at your house?

      • -108 dBm, 32 asu right now. I know it's not great but I averaged 4-5mbps during evening hours when I bought the house. I've used it a few times as a backup when the cable went out and it was fine. I streamed the superbowl in HD through my phone this year. The drop in performance is very recent. I was going to ignore it until they increased my bill. They should have left me alone. :)

        I don't expect stellar performance with that signal but I'm getting 7Mbps now at 1:45am. I've seen it sustain 15Mbps jus

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sims 2 ( 994794 )

          Sounds about like my experience it used to run between 8-10mbps but in the last 6 months it dropped down to 4mbps or less and the connection would drop out and I would have to manually reset it.

          Swapped out all of my equipment ended up replacing my longtime router modem combo with a t1114 That fixed the need for the manual resets but it was still slow and unstable.
          So I dont know if it was the trees or if verizons towers loose range the more heavily loaded they are.

          What I ended up doing that solved my problem

    • I do the same thing w/my AT&T unlimited account; AT&T pulled a similar stunt w/their grandfathered unlimited accounts, plus they send an automated text at around 20GB/month stating that you may experience throttling at 22.5GB or so depending on network load or some-such crap. So apparently, in AT&T-speak, "unlimited" means "20GB, give or take".

      Anyways, every month or two, I make sure to delete 20-40GB of music from my phone, and then re-download my "80's-90's Music" playlist from iCloud :)

      • Verizon's not allowed to throttle grandfathered LTE. It's part of the agreement they made when they bought their huge chunk of the 700Mhz spectrum years ago. They're allowed to throttle 3G but I get LTE at home.

  • One of my nephews burns through 5-15GB per day whenever he stays over just from using multiplayer games like Bloodborne, Dark Souls III and Overwatch on the PS4.
    • Sounds very inefficient.

    • Really? That sounds ridiculous (not saying your wrong). I thought the consensus was that online gaming didn't need a lot of bandwidth and data, just low latency. Maybe it's a console thing? I really don't think my PC is pulling down GBs/day for gaming online; streaming is most definitely what eats into my data cap the most.

      Also, I assume that you're not letting him do that through a Mobile connection, lol.

      • Maps and character skins/models. It was a long time ago now, (closing in on a decade) but when Unreal Tournament 3 came out, we were shocked to find that maps were clocking in at 50-100mb each. While you could play just fine on a 1-2Mbps DSL connection, you'd miss the first few minutes of each map if you didn't already have everything downloaded. That included if someone used a custom skin or model that was on the server but which you didn't have. Part of the problem was often that the server didn't have th

  • Really? So little?? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    In antemillenial units, that's just one CD per day. Don't you think people will be watching series and movies on their phones? By then we will most definitely have usable mobile projectors, folding screens, maybe viewing glasses or even a brain interface.

  • Report: Average American Will Use 22GB of Mobile Data Per Month In 2021

    Oh come on, now. We'll use much more than that watching 4Ks of Where The Boys Aren't, vols. 127, 128, 129, and 130.

  • Will Use 22GB of Mobile Data Per Month (Score:4, Insightful)

    by l3v1 ( 787564 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @06:52AM (#52231723)
    Well, the more important issue is not how much mobile data any American will use, but:
    - how much will 22gb/month cost for them, and
    - how many of those average Americans will have at least a usable 4G connection by then.

    • Yea, that was my thought too. Unless they seriously build out capacity, I have zero reason to pay out the nose for that kind of data.

      Besides, phones keep getting thinner and thinner so where is the battery life going to be coming from? I don't plan on being chained to a power outlet to use 22 gigs. Utterly bonkers.

  • i would not say the average user would /use/ that much data so much as the average user will be forced that much data. strip the ads and retarded scripting from pages and its amazing how light they are. imagining that the state of commericialisation will only get fatter from here on out.
  • Odd that I switched to a new AT&T "Unlimited Plan" which gives me 22GB of data before throttling me down to the stone age and now Ericcson is predicting 22GB will be what everyone needs in a few years. Not 20GB, not 25GB. What's so special about the 22GB amount? http://arstechnica.com/busines... [arstechnica.com]

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