Study: Data use doubles in U.S.

Americans are so committed to their smartphones and tablets that they used nearly 1 trillion gigabytes of mobile data last year, according to a study published by a top industry trade group.

That’s more than double the amount of data we used the year before, representing a big jump. It reflects the tremendous explosion in mobile browsing — particularly online streaming music and video, both of which require lots of data.

The report from CTIA finds that each month in 2015, consumers sucked down 804 billion megabytes of data, which adds up to a total of 9.65 billion gigabytes.

That’s a huge amount of online data. And it’s all the more remarkable when you look at prior years. From December 2013 to December 2014, U.S. data consumption grew by about 26 percent. But over the following year, it grew by 137 percent.

Some of that growth could be a result of the growing number of Americans who are choosing to get rid of their landlines and go mobile-only. Data from the Commerce Department show that we’re increasingly abandoning our home Internet plans and exclusively using our phones to go online.

But we’re also consuming more data-intensive services. YouTube and Netflix account for over half of all North American Internet traffic at peak hours, according to Sandvine, and the number keeps creeping upward. Throw in streaming audio such as music and online podcasts, and that figure jumps up to 70 percent.

As a result, the wireless industry is pulling in huge revenues, nearly $200 billion last year.