A new report has highlighted the marked increase in data usage among Irish mobile phone owners, which may lead to financial headaches in the near future.
The Comreg report into all Irish communications has found that our use of data has skyrocketed up 260pc in just two years, rising from 500Mb a month to today’s 1.8Gb.
It reflects the growing use of smartphones, which are both useful for, and make us reliant on, constant web browsing and online communications.
We rely on mobile data
Statcounter, for example, has consistently revealed Irish people’s growing use of mobile devices for browsing the web.
Comreg reports on comparisons throughout Europe for mobile packages, with billpay deals largely consisting of 182 minutes, 140SMS and 2Gb of data.
If you are on such a package in Ireland now the odds are you’re skirting with danger with your data usage.
For 1.8Gb to be the average, plenty must be going above, which can bring in significant additional charges.
But prices are dropping
What’s interesting, though, is the average monthly cost of using a mobile is dropping. Two years ago it was €27.08, continually falling to a low of €24.75 now.
Admittedly that includes the far lower prepay average of €15.38, but even the average bill pay of €34.68 has dropped over €5 in two years.
However, were we all to start going above our allotted usage amounts, that will start to rise.
This means that, when buying a phone or a contract or whatever, don’t accept a salesperson telling you 1Gb is more than enough.
If you snap up an iPhone 6s or a Galaxy 6s Edge the odds are you will want to use it, a lot. It will be hard to stay below the 1.8Gb average then.
Main image via Shutterstock
