Verizon CFO says "Share Everything" Works Because People Know They Don't Use Much Data

Unlimited data customers are flocking to Share Everything, says Fran Shammo, Verizon CTO, because many of them realize they don't consume much data, and like the idea of sharing a single data plan across multiple devices. 

True, overall bandwidth consumption is growing briskly.

At a global level, Analysys Mason predicts that mobile data will grow at a 41 percent compound annual growth rate. That would be quite a slower rate than had been the case in 2011, for example, when growth was about 90 percent, on average, in the U.S. market. 

But most users don't actually consume that much data.

According to a 2011 Nielsen monthly analysis of cellphone bills for 65,000 lines, smart phone owners, especially those with iPhones and Android devices, were consuming about 435 megabytes in the first quarter of 2011, up from about 230 Mbytes in the first quarter of 2010. 

Data usage for the top 10 percent of smartphone users was up 109 percent, as you would expect. The top one percent of users increased their usage by 155 percent from 1.8 GBytes in the first quarter of 2010 to over 4.6 GBytes in the first quarter of 2011, Nielsen said. 

Still, though growth is occurring across the board, at the 80th percentile and below, users consumed 500 Mbytes or less each month. In the 60th percentile, users consumed 250 Mbytes or less each month.