Most U.K. Users Seem to Overestimate Their Mobile Data Consumption

New research from billmonitor.com, the Ofcom-approved mobile price comparison site based on analysis of customers' actual bills, shows that smart phone data use has more than doubled since late 2010.

The average U.K. smart phone user now uses 154 MBytes per month, compared to 71 MBytes in late 2010. Nearly 30 percent of smart phone users now use more than 250 MBytes per month.

The study by billmonitor of 215,507 bills from U.K. customers suggests the flip side of growing data consumption: many users are on plans that are more expensive than needed.

In fact, “bill shock” when users exceed their usage caps is surprisingly limited, the study suggests.

The billmonitor.com’s analysis of customer bills shows that in any given month, only around two percent of analyzed bills include out-of-bundle data charges of more than £10. Also, it appears that out-of-bundle spending on mobile data is actually decreasing, even as data usage increases overall.

The real problem facing most UK smartphone users is that they are overcompensating for the amount of data they use by having a much too large data allowance, and overpaying.

Half of all smart phone users still aer using less than 154 MBytes worth of data a month. But 88 percent of smart phone users have opted for a monthly data allowance of at least 500 MBytes, of which most goes unused.