Vodafone has a promotion on at the moment offering a 60 Gb data bundle for the price of 15 Gb. It sounds like a good deal but research by everyone’s-favourite-place-to-buy a 555 or pack of resistors RS Components shows that it’s not quite as generous as it might seem.
People just don’t use that much data. Particularly Brits. In the 34 OECD countries, the UK comes 22nd for the amount of mobile data consumed averaging 2.53 GB per month. Even top of the table Finns wouldn’t challenge the Vodafone magnanimity as, on average, they use 15.45 GB a month.
Finland has always been high on mobile phone usage, many people have weekend homes in the lakes which don’t have broadband or landlines. The full OECD data is here. When you compare it with the excellent data from Cable.co.uk you can see that price doesn’t seem to directly affect usage.
Of course you’d need to factor in other aspects like disposable income per head, mobile coverage, availability of Wi-Fi and of fixed infrastructure but this is an interesting data point.
Particularly if you are shopping for a new contract and think you need a lot of mobile data: You probably don’t.