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Mobidia's My Data Manager App Finds 4G LTE Subscribers Using More Wi-Fi

Chris Hill, SVP Marketing for Mobidia Image Credit: Mobidia

Mobidia, a provider of latest data and insights on mobile usage worldwide, shared its recent findings on trends in the Wi-Fi and LTE markets. Based on data crowdsourced from more than 1.5 million mobile users across the globe, Mobidia found that the amount of data consumed over the Wi-Fi network grew much higher compared to the data consumed on cellular networks, including the 4G LTE segment. At the same time, the use of data on LTE continues to grow faster compared to the 3G network. Mobidia crowdsourced this and a host of other insightful data via its popular My Data Manager Apps, which has recorded more than 8 million downloads since its introduction 3 years ago.

In an interview between Chris Hill, the Senior VP of Marketing for Mobidia and Prushothma Rao and Tara Neal of PCC Mobile Broadband, Chris said that these trends correspond to developments in the device and content markets. Wi-Fi has become the preferred connection option at home and at work, where the bulk of today's data is being consumed. Consumers leverage these Wi-Fi connections to access bandwidth intensive applications for online activities such as conducting online transactions, accessing enterprise portals, streaming movies and audio, upgrading and updating their mobile applications, downloading rich media content and accessing online games. Chris attributes this user behaviour to quality concerns and user economics given that Wi-Fi networks deliver continuous superior end-user experience, do not eat into their monthly quotas on their data plans and guarantee no incidences of overages or billshocks. On cellular data, less intensive applications see higher usage, including services such as email, browsing, on-the-road navigation and access to social media applications.  However, when bandwidth intensity applications (such as online music streaming services) are provided at highly subsidized rates or included for free as part of a fixed price data plan, these applications start seeing higher usage on cellular networks.

For the high usage of data on 4G, Chris cited among others, factors such as the larger screens and easy navigation on LTE smartphones which promote longer browsing times and a higher consumption of rich media such as videos. LTE users also tend to take up bigger plans, either because bigger quota plans are often the most frequently offered plans under LTE or because the superior user experience on the consumption of rich media content lures LTE users to upgrade their packages or go beyond their usage limits. 

According to Chris, Mobidia’s My Data Manager App enables usage information from subscribers to be used to provide insights on various aspects of data usage, covering total data consumed on different connections, type of content consumed, time spent of different content, network usage details, usage by device types, usage by different plans, usage by different operators and a host of other highly relevant and timely analytics.

At the same time, the users of My Data Manager App, says Chris, benefit from being able to monitor their data usage, optimize the use of various applications based on available connections to manage their data spending, time their usage and manage overages. My Data Manager App has seen a sharp rise in its take up, with the bulk of its 8 million downloads recorded in the last 18 months, added Chris.

Service providers, application vendors and players from other industry verticals offering mobile commerce services such as the mobile payments are some of the major client groups expected to benefit tremendously from having real-time insights into these usage trends. Service providers, in particular, are in need of tools that can provide them information on the bandwidth consumption across their different networks, the take up on the various content types (such as audio, video, operator messaging and VoLTE services) provided as part of operators’ digital service offering and the popularity of various data packages and bundles. These insights, in turn, become critical inputs in the design and roll out of their future services and also network and infrastructure expansion decisions.

Mobidia will be at the upcoming CTIA14 as well as the 4G World.

Author

Founder and CEO at The Fast Mode | NFV/MANO/Openstack | Telecoms Service Innovations & Monetization | Speaker, Moderator and Analyst

Prushothma brings more than 22 years of experience in designing and delivering some of the most advanced service innovations in the telecoms industry.

Follow him on Twitter @prushothma, LinkedIn @prushothma

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