Berkshire-based Arieso UK, which offers software and services that are designed to help optimize wireless network performance, has revealed in a new study - 'Recent Smartphone Trends & the Extreme Data User' - that just 1% of all Mobile Broadband users now consume HALF of all downloaded data.

The firm, which clearly has a vested interest in painting the worst picture possible, further warns that "the capacity issues plaguing mobile operators around the world will worsen in 2012". It also found that iPhone 4S users are the "hungriest" data consumers, demanding twice as much data as iPhone 4 users and three times as much as those with an iPhone 3G.


Arieso's analysis compares the data consumption of users of the latest Smartphone's against the iPhone3G as a "normalised benchmark" (iPhone3G = 100%). However you don't have to own an iPhone to be a data hog.

Data calls per subscriber:
HTC Google Nexus One: 221%
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10i: 157%
HTC Desire: 156%

Uplink data volumes:
3G Modems (various): 2654%
HTC Desire S: 323%
iPhone 4S: 320%

Downlink data volumes:
3G Modems (various): 2432%
iPhone 4S: 276%
Samsung Galaxy S: 199%

It makes perfect sense for 3G Modems (e.g. USB Modems / Dongles) to eat the most data as they're often sold as part of dedicated Mobile Broadband devices and targeted at computer users. By contrast Smartphone's don't make the best web surfers or dedicated internet devices.

The situation is not dissimilar to fixed line broadband ISPs, some of which often complain that a top 5-10% of customers can consume 90% of their capacity. This might sound bad and in some ways it is, although at the same time it's also part of how the shared bandwidth and single pricing model works. Put another way, at some point in time all of us will be a part of that 5-10% (e.g. when we need to do a big download) but most of the time we aren't.

Arieso's study, which analysed the usage of 1.1 million customers at a European mobile operator for 24-hours, also notes that the situation has changed since 2009 when 3% of heavy users generated 40% of network traffic (this 40% figure has since jumped to 70%).