Study: Most smartphone users don't use 'large chunks' of data
If you have a smartphone, chances are you are paying for a plan that provides you with more megabytes of data than you use, according to a consumer advocacy group.
"The stereotype is that smartphone users are devouring large chunks of data," said Patrick Deignan, spokesman with the Chicago-based Citizens Utility Board.
However according to analysis by Houston company Validas for the Citizens Utility Board, that's not always true.
More than 96 percent of smartphone users in the Validas' sample (19,000 cell phone bills) consumed less than 2 gigabytes of data. Smartphone users averaged about 456 megabytes of data a month.
How consumers use their phones does not match with their plans, he said.
"The suit doesn't fit," he said.
CUB said 70 percent of 19,000 bills analyzed over three years were found to have about $331 a year in wasted minutes, texts, megabytes and other services the customers did not use.
"One of the confusing things is how to grasp how much data they are using," Deignan said.
A light user may use 24 megabytes a month, sending and receiving about 50 e-mails, 100 web page views and post 10 photos. On the opposite end, an extreme user could send and receive 5,000 e-mails a month, 5,000 web pages, 500 photo posts, download 100 apps, games or songs, stream 25 hours of music and 20 hours of video, bringing their total to use to 4.8 gigabytes.
The organization has published a guide to cell phone data plans and made it available on its website, http://www.citizensutilityboard.org. CUB's cell phone saver, which debuted about three years ago and analyzes bills to find ways to save, can be found at http://www.CUBcellphonesaver.com. Customers need to be signed up for online billing with their cell phone carrier in order use the saver.
The organization also has information on its site about prepaid cell phone plans.
"Dollar for dollar," prepaid cell phones are a better deal, but not if you want the latest Android, iPhone or BlackBerry phone, he said.
The Citizens Utility Board said it supports several reforms and called on the industry to offer lower-tiered data plans (such as a plan for 500 megabytes or 1 gigabyte), family share plans (such as 2 gigabytes for a family of four) and offer rollover data so customers can cash in on unused megabytes for reward points or billing discounts.
Carolyn Schamberger, Verizon Wireless spokeswoman, said the company has "streamlined data plans and usage-based options that allow customers to select the plan that best matches their wireless needs."
In addition, the company offers tools to help its customers monitor and manage their wireless usage and avoid unexpected higher bills.
Imagine a city wifi network (similar to the city roads), that allowed citizens and visitors to access for free (like the city roads). Then you would be able to setup your cell phone to use the wifi for voice-over IP (voip) similar to Vonage and to use an application like Skype instead of burning your cell phone minutes, and use the wifi for data/broadband access instead of your dataplan. This is already somewhat possible on the University of Illinois campus for students/employees as well as schools that are members of eduroam -- http://www.cites.illinois.edu/wireless/eduroam/index.html
At that point, prepaid cell minutes and per-gigabyte dataplans can become a reality especially for the latest phones, with most of the data/talk time being covered by WiFi in high-tech leading cities. It would be a boon to international students and attract international businesses due to incredibly low communication costs and the ability to be constantly connected to customers. Your cell and data plan minutes would only used while traveling outside of city coverage area.
Of course that would take both a technologically advanced city and citizenry as well as local governments with the vision to see the impact this would have in the future economic development, lowering the cost of starting a business (like kissing your $70/month data plan goodby), and enabling connectivity for all regardless of economic status. And then we could investigate cityroam.
Comments
News-Gazette.com embraces discussion of both community and world issues. We welcome you to contribute your ideas, opinions and comments, but we ask that you avoid personal attacks, vulgarity and hate speech. We reserve the right to remove any comment at our discretion, and we will block repeat offenders' accounts. To post comments, you must first be a registered user, and your username will appear with any comment you post. Happy posting.