Mobile Carriers Might Overcount Data Usage by 5% to 7%

U.S. mobile service providers might overcount end user data usage  by five to seven percent, a new study suggests. University of California Los Angeles computer science researcher Chunyi Peng probed the systems of two large U.S. mobile networks representing 50 percent of all U.S. mobile subscribers.

The researchers used a data-logging app on Android phones to check the data use that the carriers were recording. The carriers were found to usually count data correctly, but they tended to overcount—and hence potentially overcharge—when a person used applications that stream video or audio, and particularly when coverage was weak or unreliable.