Free apps burning through mobile data allowances

 

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By Stewart Mitchell

Posted on 17 May 2011 at 16:09

Free apps are eating into mobile users data allowances, according to research sponsored by Virgin Media Business.

Free apps are munching through as much as 115MB an hour sending and requesting information from user handsets, according to the company.

The research cited the Tap Zoo game as the worst offender in terms of traffic created, with the game sending 9.7MB in only five minutes of gameplay.

Tap Zoo consumes 75,579% more data than the least data-hungry app

“This is signaling messages,” Dimitris Mavrakis, a senior analyst with Informa Telecoms and Media, which undertook the research for Virgin, told PC Pro.

“Your phone needs to transfer traffic (download, upload or send an instant message on Tap Zoo), your phone has to 'open' a connection to the network for that to work."

The study of the top 50 free mobile apps found that, on average, apps consumed 0.89 MB in a five minute period and 10.7 MB an hour, with users typically burning through 119MB on app data every month.

“Tap Zoo consumes 75,579% more data than the least data-hungry app, which uses a mere 13KB in a five minute period,” said Mavrakis.

As many data packages limit downloads to 500MB a month, these apps could cost users money.

Such data traffic will affect mobile operators, too. “By 2015, the average smartphone user will be generating around 700% more traffic than they do today, with much of that coming from mobile applications,” Mavrakis said.

“With smartphone users already making up two-thirds of all mobile traffic, despite just 13% of mobile users possessing a smartphone, you can see why operators are starting to get worried," he said.

"Moving to a fibre-optic backhaul service is the only way that operators can really future-proof their network.”

Tap Zoo, which has previously come under fire for its in-app payments practices, has not returned requests asking for details of the data transfers.