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Understanding Pricing Effects on Mobile Data Usage

This paper performs an exploratory study on mobile usage patterns in the United States versus South Africa over a temporal period of three years (2013-2015). Using data collected from the MySpeedTest application, we analyze differences in usage behavior for the top 5 applications in terms of total data usage in each country, comparing usage on different connection types (Wi-Fi vs. cellular) as well as for devices on different data plans (unlimited vs. limited monthly data cap vs. prepaid). The study also attempts a deeper analysis into the behavioral effects of mobile pricing practices such as zero-rating, which is when a network carrier does not charge customers for cellular data used by certain services or applications. Our findings show that US users slightly prefer cellular connections to Wi-Fi connections for most of the US top 5 most used applications, while South African users generally prefer Wi-Fi connections (with the notable exception of Facebook). Further, US users on unlimited and limited plans display much higher average monthly usage than those on prepaid plans, while South African users on prepaid plans generally display much higher usage than those on unlimited and limited plans. Although we observed increased mobile data usage for certain applications during and after zero-rating periods, a lack of sufficient data rendered many of these results inconclusive. In addition, data insufficiencies prevented a conclusive study on the behavioral effects of changing data prices for users on prepaid plans. Thus, we urge the importance of recruiting users to download and use MySpeedTest, especially focusing on South African users on prepaid plans.