A report released by networking firm Cisco said that there was a 69 percent growth in monthly data use by mobile phone owners globally from 2013 to 2014. The average reached 2.5 exabytes or 2.5 billion gigabytes.
By 2019, the volume is expected to grow 10 times to an average of 24.4 exabytes monthly, reports AJC.com.
Because more people are using data on their phones, Internet service providers (ISPs) are placing caps even on those on unlimited plans.
On Friday, Sprint announced a cap of 23 GB on its 4G network, which would result in subscriber's connection slowing down significantly if they are using a "constrained" tower which is actually all the towers for residents of major metro areas. Sprint says the move is needed to protect the 97 percent of its subscribers who also are on unlimited plans but use only few gigabytes monthly.
John Saw, chief technology officer of Sprint, explains, "One way we aim to make the customer experience better is to protect against the possibility that a small minority of customers might occupy an unreasonable share of network resources," quotes TechTimes.
The average mobile phone owner uses only about 2GB a month, according to the Cisco report.
Similar limits have been made by other ISPs. At T-Mobile, the cap is at 21 GB, while it is 22 GB at AT&T. However, Sprint's cap applies only to users who upgraded their plans after Oct. 16, 2015. The ISP has not yet announced how it would treat subscribers with grandfathered unli plans.
Saw points out that the 23GB threshold "is typical in the industry and other carriers have already implemented a similar practice" which he says is a smart approach the ensure "a small number of customers don't adversely impact the experience for others."