Data traffic habits of smartphone users

Cintia Garza/Maravedis | July 26, 2010

We all know the stresses that data traffic growth is putting on wireless network capacity. After analyzing data usage of smartphones and notebooks and the applications they support on AT&Ts network, I gained a better understand what is causing this explosive growth in data usage (see table below).

The average smartphone residential user consumes between 200 and 300MB monthly. Currently, 65% of AT&T smartphone customers use less than 200MB of data per month on average.

Average residential (non-business) smartphone user consumes per day:

Less than 10 emails sent/received (no attachments) = 2.5MB
1 email with photo attachment = 10MB
3 emails sent/received (with attachment) = 12 MB
Average 5 minutes of streaming music per day (or total 2.5 hrs per month) = 72MB
5 web pages visited = 25MB
0-1 applications downloaded (games/songs) per day= 60MB
10 social media posts = 14 MB
Average 1 minute of streaming video per day or (30 minutes per month) = 60 MB

TOTAL DATA USAGE PER MONTH = ~ 255.5MB per month

Average residential (non-business) laptop user consumes per day: