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It will come as no surprise to anyone that the amount of mobile data consumed is increasing year-over-year; just about any research company (iGR included) or press article will tell you this. And the increase is significant and continuing. The “bandwidth crunch” is significant enough that mobile operators regularly have to explain to Wall Street how they are upgrading their networks while at the same time offering larger buckets of gigabytes to their consumers.
The Gillott household is a good example of this; we have been surviving on only 10 GB of data for the last 18 months or so. But this summer, with both kids on the network consuming data at a faster rate, I was getting the 75% warning messages only two weeks into the month. Not good. At the beginning of this month, I upgraded our plan to a 30 GB bucket for not a lot more dollars. Everyone is happy now.
Thirty gigabytes a month sounds like a lot of data and you would question if we could ever use it. But in reality, that is just seven high-definition movies (each two-hour movie averages about 4 GB in high definition). Who buys an HD movie over mobile? I do. Last week I was at an airport waiting for another delayed flight and decided to watch a movie on the way home. I turned my phone into a hotspot, connected my tablet and purchased an HD movie from iTunes; it downloaded in about 25 minutes.
Now, I do not expect our family to buy seven new movies each month, but one or two is reasonable. So how much data we will actually consume is up for debate and experimentation. In fact, next month I think we are going to see if we can “break the bank” and use 30 GB. We will wait until we all have LTE for that (one family member is still on 3G). More on the experiment later.
Back to the title question: How much mobile data can consumers actually use? Looking at consumption today, the gorilla in the room is, of course, video. The percentage of bandwidth used due to video is continuing to increase. But if more consumers look at HD video — on a tablet that makes sense, less so on a smartphone — then more bandwidth will be consumed. A standard definition two-hour movie is about 1.5 GB compared to 4 GB for an HD movie, as stated previously.
But what if 4K HD starts to take off? Then the movie is a cool 160 GB! I would argue that the benefit of watching a 4K HD movie on a tablet is questionable, but that does not mean people will not try. New compression technologies and algorithms will certainly be needed, so maybe the 4K HD is effectively only 30 GB to 40 GB, or 20 GB. Even at this level, the amount of mobile data that could be consumed would jump significantly. If 4K HD movie downloads become reality, LTE Broadcast and caching on the device likely will be needed to spread the load — a mass broadcast of content could take place at night — but will result in more data being consumed.
To answer the question: There is probably a limit, but we are not close to it yet. The amount of mobile bandwidth consumed will likely increase for the foreseeable future, which means operators will keep implementing new network technologies and increasing the amount of data in the average consumer’s bucket.
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.
