Survey Claims UK Mobile Users Wasting 14GB of Data a Month

A new survey of 4,000 UK mobile phone users by consumer magazine Which? has claimed that consumers on SIM-Only plans and contracts are “wasting” an average of 14GB (GigaBytes) of mobile broadband data each month. In short, some people could save money by switching to a plan with a smaller allowance.

The survey, which was conducted during February 2021, noted that 44% of respondents on pay monthly contracts have a data allowance of 10GB or more (including unlimited), but 47% use less than 3GB a month and 72% use 5GB or less.

The COVID-19 crisis has also caused people to spend more time connected to WiFi via their fixed line home broadband ISP, which means that the amount of mobile data going unused each month has increased – by 4GB per month on average.

However, we shouldn’t forget that some people pick a mobile plan for other reasons, such as specific features, perks or unlimited calling/text allowances. Consumers often like to have some security in the plans we choose and thus many may have a sensible tendency to buy a more than we expect to use. Some plans also give you the ability to roll-over unused data allowances to the following month or beyond.

Suffice to say, if you’re out of contract then there’s often some merit in saving money by switching to a plan that’s more closely aligned to your usage, but at the same time the plans we choose aren’t always selected based on the linear gauge of how much money we could save. Indeed, other factors including service / support quality, mobile broadband speed and network coverage may also play into the decision.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that the data people do or don’t use often forms part of an operator’s overall economic model. Put another way, if we all used 100% of our data then prices may well rise because a lot of operators base their costings around the fact that many users won’t gobble everything (balance of shared capacity).