35% of Smart Phone Data is Consumed Using Wi-Fi

On average, smart phones are making eight Wi-Fi connections per day and offloading as much as 35 percent of total data consumption to a Wi-Fi network, while heavy users offload as much as 70 percent , according to DeviceScape. 

You might think such statistics point to heavy smart phone data consumption, but that seems not to be the case. 

The overwhelming majority of customers on AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon networks studied by NPD Connected Intelligence don’t even use 2 GBytes worth of mobile data per month, which suggests most consumers do not need “unlimited” service plans. 


NPD Connected Intelligence tracked users on 1,000 Android smart phones as part of the study. T-Mobile USA has users who consume more, though. Some 11 percent of T-Mobile USA customers use more than 3 GBytes per month, compared to four percent of AT&T and Sprint customers who consume more than 3 Gbytes a month. 

About three percent of Verizon customers use more than 3 Gbytes a month NPD Connected Intelligence analyst Eddie Hold says Apple iPhone usage is pretty similar to that of Android users. 

From a consumer standpoint, there often therefore is little to no actual difference between an “unlimited” and a “big enough” service plan for voice, messaging or Internet access. 

The reason is simply that most people don’t actually use enough of any of those apps to “need” unlimited usage. On the other hand, there frequently are good reasons for a service provider to offer “unlimited” access to voice, messaging or Internet access. 

That especially is the case when the carrier’s own usage statistics indicate that most people will not use unusual amounts of capacity, whether that is voice, messaging or Internet access. 

Under such conditions, provider safely can offer “unlimited” service with no danger of unusual stresses on the network. In other words, “unlimited” is an excellent marketing platform when a service provider knows it can safely make the offer.