Well that shouldn’t be a huge surprise given the fact that T-Mobile and Sprint still have unlimited data plans, while AT&T and Verizon do not – unless you were grandfathered into one. According to the chart at the bottom of this post, you can see the average use for each user on the big four networks in the US, dating back to Q1 2012. And as of Q1 2014, those on the largest carrier used the least data, followed by the number 2 carrier AT&T, then number 3 Sprint and followed up by T-Mobile at number 4. Which it’s interesting to see it play out that way. However, I’m sure if AT&T and Verizon still offered unlimited data it’d be the other way around. Especially with their data speeds.
You’ll also notice that the usage for T-Mobile jumped quite a bit from Q4 2013 to Q1 2014 compared to the other quarters. Now we don’t have a confirmed reason as to why that’s happened, but one can only guess is that T-Mobile added a ton of new customers in that time frame, and thus the average sky rocketed. As I’m sure a lot of people opted for the unlimited data plan since that gets you about the same price as the 1GB plan on Verizon or AT&T. It’s also important to point out this is postpaid only. So it doesn’t include any prepaid users from any of the carriers.
This chart comes from Macquarie Capital and of course they can’t publish data on Sprint and T-Mobile without mentioning the possible merger between the two. Macquarie states that the merger has about a 70% chance of being approved, which is a big jump over the 10% we heard last week. But analysts can predict all they want, we won’t know for sure until the FCC and DOJ say for sure that it’s approved.
How much data do you use every month? Let us know in the comments down below.
