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Let’s cut to the chase and give you the answer: Yes. Now to the explanation.
I have discussed in the past how much data people use in different circumstances. I have also mentioned my teenagers and how they treat mobile data as air: needed every day in vast quantities for life. For the past month, I have been tracking the data use of the family to see how much a reasonable household can really use. Rather than turn off Wi-Fi in the home and put everything on LTE (more on this later), we decided to be reasonable and try to behave “normally.”
The reason for the experiment was linked to the last AT&T Mobility promotion, which gave us 30 gigabytes to share instead of 10 GB for an extra $30 per month. Given that we were regularly nearing the 10 GB limit in the summer and at that time only had three LTE iPhones, I took advantage of AT&T Mobility’s offer and bumped us up to 30 GB. Do we need all that data? Surely that is more than sufficient?
We now have four LTE iPhones in the family, plus numerous laptops and iPads (all of the latter are Wi-Fi, not LTE). We also travelled over the holiday to upstate New York, so there was plenty of opportunity to use LTE outside of our hometown of Austin, Texas. And my daughter was back from college for the whole test period and therefore contributed to the test.
So how did we do? Well, between Dec. 12 and Jan. 11, we consumed a cool 28.63 GB. By Jan. 6, we were getting messages warning us we were over 75% of our monthly allotment. By Jan. 11, we were over 90%, so I turned off cellular data on my phone. I did not want to pay any overage charges.
A breakdown on the use by individuals in the family is telling.
My wife used a whopping 270 megabytes. Her data usage usually consists of checking the weather, movie times, a lot of iMessage and WhatsApp with the kids, and maybe a little FaceTime (but usually on Wi-Fi). She does not purchase music through her phone nor watch video. And most of her time is spent in a Wi-Fi-connected environment. Hence, her impact on our test was minimal.
I used 6.87 GB, which I consider to be about average. I was traveling for three of the four weeks of the test (business and vacation). When I travel I tether both my laptop and iPad to the iPhone to get data connections. I will not pay for Wi-Fi in a hotel, and if the hotel Wi-Fi connection is too slow, as many are, I will simply use the hot spot connection to LTE to get data service. Plus, I do watch video on my iPad and iPhone and I also download and purchase music. We have an extensive music collection in iCloud and I will frequently download new music from iCloud to my iPhone before hopping on a plane. I will do the same with movies that we have in iCloud, although I think I only did this once on LTE this month. And I use Dropbox extensively for work and to offload movies and photos. But when I was at home this month, I was almost exclusively on Wi-Fi.
My college-age daughter used 3.57 GB. She was traveling with us for two weeks of the test and also uses iCloud for her music, plus Spotify. And if the Wi-Fi is too slow in a hotel, she will use the hot spot. But she does not consume huge amounts of video. That said, she seems to share just about every photo she takes with all of her friends via Instagram or WhatsApp.
So you will have worked out by now that my high school senior son is the winner, consuming a cool 17.92 GB … in one month … after being told to “slow down” three weeks into the test … and only traveling for one week out of the test period. What the heck was he doing, I hear you cry? Funny, I asked him the same thing.
My son clearly demonstrates the impact video can have on data consumption. He has music on his iPhone, but does not use iCloud and buys very little music from his phone. When he considers the Wi-Fi at home “too slow” (i.e. not available instantly to download everything in one go), he uses the hot spot on his LTE iPhone to get his stuff. This means that he will stream a couple of basketball games at the same time from ESPN via LTE to his laptop and his iPhone. Why watch only one game when you can watch two? He also seems to do this as a sleep aid by leaving the LTE streaming on while falling asleep … great use of bandwidth.
The second “challenge” he faces is that the school blocks certain apps and content from its Wi-Fi. He was complaining he could not get to a specific basketball video clips site from school, so had to use LTE. If he has a late basketball practice, he has a couple of hours to kill between the end of classes and the start of practice – plenty of time to consume a few extra gigabytes.
The scary part is that my son could have easily exceeded 20 GB; I told him to slow down and be careful five days before the end of the month. The main issue is that he perceives no difference between Wi-Fi and LTE; if one is not fast enough, he simply uses the other. So if too many kids at school are bogging down the Wi-Fi, use LTE and avoid the issue. He is not paying his portion of the cell hone bill (yet), and no doubt this would change his usage pattern a little. But the reality is that many users today want access to all their content and stuff wherever they are at any time of day; I do this as much as my kids. If I want to download a movie at an airport, I will use LTE, since airport Wi-Fi is often too slow and there are restrictions.
The second lesson from this month’s experiment is that Wi-Fi is absolutely necessary to manage costs. Without Wi-Fi at home, school and in my office, we would have used far more mobile data. Using Wi-Fi whenever available will drastically reduce LTE consumption. The issue, though, is finding good Wi-Fi; the experience is not consistent. And while many hotels say “free Wi-Fi,” the speeds are often slow. Those with good Wi-Fi usually want you to pay for it. Why pay for a service that matches LTE, which I have already paid for?
Given that we used to think 10 GB a month was sufficient and have now proved that 30 GB can be consumed, what’s next? I can easily see us “needing” 50 GB a month by the end of 2015. It does seem that there is more and more content out there to be consumed and more ways to download music, movies, work files and video. As speeds get faster with LTE-Advanced and 802.11ac, etc., more content will be consumed, simply because it can be and because the content will be better quality – high-definition movies, for example.
For those of you wanting to limit your data usage, I have some simple advice: don’t have kids (especially teens) or don’t include them on your plan. And make sure they understand the difference between LTE and Wi-Fi.
Iain Gillott, the founder and president of iGR, is an acknowledged wireless and mobile industry authority and an accomplished presenter. Gillott has been involved in the wireless industry, as both a vendor and analyst, for more than 20 years. IGR was founded in 2000 as iGillottResearch in order to provide in-depth market analysis and data focused exclusively on the wireless and mobile industry. Before founding iGR, Gillott was a group VP in IDC’s telecommunications practice, managing IDC’s worldwide research on wireless and mobile communications and Internet access, telecom brands, residential and small business telecommunications and telecom billing services. Prior to joining IDC, Gillott was in various technical roles and a proposal manager at EDS (now Hewlett-Packard), responsible for preparing new business proposals to wireless and mobile operators.
