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Research: Brits waste £260m of mobile data monthly

November 25, 2022

Sky Mobile has reached three million customers and now claims to be the fastest-growing mobile provider in the UK. With Sky Mobile enabling customers to ‘roll’ and therefore keep their spare data every month, these three million customers are protected from the ‘data consumption gap’ – the gulf between the data paid for and the data actually used each month.

Providing customers with the option to keep unused data is crucial as research shows on average mobile users in the UK are not using – and therefore losing – 94GB of the data paid for each year. This equates to a financial loss of £84 a year per person – a £260 million monthly loss across the UK.

This overpayment is a combination of the majority of providers not enabling customers to keep their unused data, as well as a lack of transparency around how much data customers require to suit their needs – therefore creating a ‘data consumption gap’:

  • On average Brits have nearly half (44 per cent) of their data left over at the end of every month
  • However, two in five (39 per cent) say they pay for more data just in case they run out
  • Nearly half (46 per cent) don’t understand how much usage 1GB equates to causing a lack of understanding about how much data they need each month

With over half of Brits (52 per cent) saying they want to spend less on their mobile contract amid the rising cost of living, Sky is calling on Brits to check their mobile plans to see how much data they are using and whether they could be saving money by switching or changing their contract.

Paul Sweeney, Managing Director, Sky Mobile, said: “At a time where we are all trying to alleviate financial pressures, it’s more important than ever to ensure your mobile contract provides good value. We should all be checking our contracts to ensure our mobile provider is giving us the flexibility to evolve as our needs do. […] Our focus from the beginning has been about creating value and fairness for our customers and this is what we continue to do day in, day out for our three million customers.”

Part of this data consumption gap is because people don’t understand what 1GB equates to. Sky advises to keep in mind that watching 80 minutes of a standard definition video or scrolling for 16 hours on the internet would use 1GB of data.

Categories: Articles, Mobile, Research

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