5G speeds are expected to boost user monthly data to around 98.34GB due to the network download and upload speeds being heavily increased, which will allow users to chew through a lot more content on a day to day basis. This is according to a recent report by giffgaff, which also notes that by 2021 data use for the average consumer every single month will be close to or a little more than half of that, totaling around 45.21GB a month, following the suspected beginning rollout of 5G by most major network operators.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, streaming video in 4K is said to be a huge contributing factor to the major spike in monthly data use for average consumers, with a large portion of that increase on a per-user basis being just 4K. According to giffgaff, the average user each month will be streaming an estimated amount of about 73.87GB of 4K video in 2025, something which would certainly need 5G speeds for it to become a usable feature on mobile devices.
While average consumer use is estimated to jump to all-time highs within the next seven years or so, not all users will be relying on 5G mobile data to get their fix of video and other internet-reliant content, nor will all users be chewing through that much data to reach those larger number of data consumption. Some users will resort to downloading more content via Wi-Fi networks to avoid the bump up in mobile data increases, which are suspected to be set at premium prices for the first couple of years. Some uses, such as the younger of the millennial crowd within the ages of 18 to 24, could be among the groups of the public which are more likely to go over their monthly data allotments with more than half of that usage being from social media, marking it as the majority factor in data use for those groups instead of 4K video streaming. Interestingly enough, the report also highlights that those within the ages of 55 to 64 are the least likely to go over their monthly data amount, while those over 65 weren’t far behind, showing that they would almost never go over their monthly data amounts. Also worth noting is that the information gathered in this report was through surveys conducted with consumers from England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, and is not necessarily representative of consumers globally.
