The news that T-Mobile is dropping its mobile data usage limit to 500MB from 1GB is not great news. This is not just about one operator, but a trend across the industry.
While T-Mobile says that “over 90%” of its customers use less than this a month (does this include customers without smartphones?), it’s not actually an enormous amount of data to be getting through each month. They say that this brings them into line with sister company Orange who already sit at that same level. Of course Orange could have increased its limit, but the reality is that as more people use more smartphones more of the time, the networks just can’t cope. And putting limitations on data usage is their way of coping. Of the main providers, only Three still has decent usage levels left.
But this isn’t great news for any media suppliers, and by that I mean anyone serving video or audio. As one person wrote on a phone blog I follow wrote:
When I first got my Android phone a few months back I installed 3G watchdog just to see exactly how much I used (having had a Sony Ericsson, then Nokia phones I wasn’t really interested up until this point). Within the calendar month, my “normal” usage (surfing, market, 24/7 push email and *the biggie* internet radio) I hit ~1GB. This has been pretty steady since.
Personally, I get through my 500MB without much use beyond email and a bit of surfing. I have WiFi at work and at home, but nonetheless, I get through “a lot” in the operators’ eyes.
My employer has been very successfully developing apps for many handsets, but these data limits do have the potential to limit growth for every media supplier. Of course, there is WiFi, and depending on your plan and location, you might get inclusive WiFi from someone like BTOpenzone which is helpful. But that doesn’t help me on the train in the morning.
The same data issue is true for streaming services like Spotify or (should it ever launch here again) Pandora. You can buffer music in advance to an extent, but downloading is still part of the deal. And this is going to become harder, or more expensive, for consumers.
[These are my own views, and don’t necessarily reflect those of my employer.]
Comments
4 responses to “Data Reductions Hurt Mobile Media”
As I’ve just tweeted (blatant plug for new Twitter account follows!) Enders calculate that 500MB a month allows you 17 minutes of radio a day…
… provided you use your data for nothing else.
I confess I haven’t checked the sums myself.
Welcome to Twitter!
17 mins is enough for one journey in one direction daily. And oddly enough, I do other data things with my phone – like browsing and Twitter.
PS If anyone knows a good Android app that monitors 3G traffic and lets you know *by application* what your usage is, then that’d be great. I’ve not found one that does all these things.
Of course, hybrid radio models solve all this problem, by shifting the business of getting audio to people ubiquitously back to a broadcast platform, whilst retaining all the lovely additional goodness that apps provide. Blatant plug for RadioDNS. (http://radiodns.org)
I think Enders’ numbers are skew-whiff. Most mobile apps stream at a maximum of 64kbps (trying to go higher than that will be futile on real-life 3G networks). I calculate that allows you 34 minutes of listening a day on a 500MB cap, assuming you do nothing else.
Unfortunately, RAJAR tells us average radio listening is about 2.5 hours a day.
I use an app called 3G Watchdog – the free version does overall monitoring, while the paid-for one monitors usage by app.
The most thirsty app is the MS Exchange mailbox I automatically check; twice as thirsty as my significantly more busy Gmail box.