Crazy huge overage fees have many people worried, and none more so than mobile users in Canada. Canadian data carriers make more revenue from it's customer's data plans than any other country.
This is all detailed in a report by telecom research firm tefficient, which released it's 14th analysis of data usage across 32 countries.
The report states:
"The most expensive mobile data countries are Canada, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic and the Netherlands and — as a consequence — mobile users in these countries are using very little mobile data."
Total mobile service revenue per Gbyte [EUR]
Charging Canadians more for data use, means Canadians have limited their consumption of data. They want to avoid getting hit with nasty rates, so they just avoid using. This isn't a good business model for getting people to actually use a service... know what I mean?
Mobile data traffic – for reporting operators
China is #1, with 840 million mobile subscriptions, leading the world in mobile petabytes carried. On average, people use only 0.5 GB per SIM per month, but overall China is the largest data carrier in the world. The US's Verizon comes in at #2, with South Korea's SK Telecom at #3.
In Finland, where half of users have unlimited data plans, which are some of the least expensive, has the highest average data usage. One operator, DNA, has the highest average usage per user in the world, at 9.9GB per month.
OpenMedia, an advocacy group, confirmed the study's findings with Katy Anderson saying:
"Once you lift those data caps we see that people use the internet in such creative and neat ways, and they're not self-censoring themselves."
More Canadian mobile data competition is required to help drive down the prices.
The Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) confirms such a conclusion, with vice-president of communications Marc Choma saying:
"What we find when looking at the available data is that usage is more directly correlated to network quality."
Canadian carriers need to wake up if they want to actually make mobile data usage something people use more.
[Images]
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/mobile-data-cost-usage-1.3911053
http://idealog.co.nz/tech/2011/10/mobile-competition-2-billion-boost-economy-report
http://tefficient.com/unlimited-pushes-data-usage-to-new-heights/
[Sources]
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/mobile-data-cost-usage-1.3911053
http://tefficient.com/unlimited-pushes-data-usage-to-new-heights/
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/publications/reports/compar/compar2016.htm#6