Carriers have been completely blindsided by the amount and speed with which data consumption is growing from smartphones and other mobile devices.

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about the growing amount of mobile traffic ("Preparing for the Growing Wave of Mobile Traffic"). So it came as no surprise when I recently read a Wall Street Journal article entitled "Confessions of an iPhone Data Hog" by Willa Plank, January 27, 2012. The article is very interesting because it provides some excellent information about average smartphone usage across various cellular carriers. However, what struck me is how na�ve cellular carriers are from a data consumption perspective. Simply stated, I think that carriers have been completely blindsided by the amount and speed with which data consumption is growing from smartphones and other mobile devices.

When the iPhone was first released, AT&T enticed users with an "all you can eat" data plan. In hindsight this was a great deal for users. As data consumption increased, this plan had to be scrapped, which has led to the tiered data plans that are offered today. Users like Willa Plank were allowed to keep their original plans (aka grandfathered) as new tiered plans were released. Now AT&T is sending a warning to users that consume the top 5% of data on a monthly basis--manage your usage better or have your service throttled. I find this absolutely hilarious! Since when did AT&T, or any other carrier for that matter, get to define what constitutes too much data?

According to the WSJ article, Nielsen determined that the average smartphone user in 2011 consumed 606MB/month. Another study conducted by NPD Connected Intelligence surveyed 700 Android users and determined that average monthly data usage ranged from 724MB on AT&T to 1.7GB on T-Mobile. Furthermore, video streaming is expected to double over the next 12 months. It is becoming obvious that the service model of cellular providers is having a hard time keeping up with demand. The concept of "normal" data usage no longer exists.

Smartphone and mobile device usage is going to continue to grow, very fast. A growing trend is that people are starting to disconnect their primary landlines in their homes and starting to use their mobile phones as their primary number. In many cases, smartphones are becoming the primary method of access to the Internet. These evolving trends are going to tax cellular networks even more.

In the movie Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner famously responded to the summons, "Build it and they will come," referring to the construction of a baseball field in the middle of a cornfield. I liken this situation to cellular networks. Carriers have built out their networks with the goal of having lots of people use them, which is now the least of their problems. A cellular carrier's network only has a finite amount of capacity, which is limited by the amount cellular spectrum they own. Yet the demand for more bandwidth continues to grow, which is putting cellular carriers in a very tough spot.

Over the next several months I plan to test services such as Netflix and Facebook using a variety of different mobile devices and look forward to sharing those results. I may not be able to define what constitutes normal usage, but I can certainly provide insight into how much data gets consumed by two leading sources of content.