Nielsen recently took a look at how we use cellphone data. They installed apps on people’s phones that tracked data usage on both cellular networks and WiFi. The data comes from a massive study on the usage of 45,000 Android users in August. Nielsen also continues to study the usage of 30,000 cellular customers every month using the same app.

What Nielsen found wasn’t surprising in that they found that younger people use cellular data the most. They also found that Hispanics are the largest data users among various ethnic groups.

Here are the average monthly usage by age:

‘                      Cell Data         WiFi Data

18 – 24            3.2 GB            14.1 GB

25 – 34            3.6 GB            11.2 GB

35 – 44            2.9 GB              9.3 GB

45 – 54            2.1 GB              7.5 GB

55 – 64            1.4 GB              6.4 GB

65+                  0.9 GB              4.8 GB

This study quantifies a lot of things that we already knew about cellular usage. We know, for example, that younger people use their cellphones to watch video more than older people. I have anecdotal evidence of that by watching my 17-year old. If she’s representative of her age group then they are using cellular data even more than the 18-24 year olds. They communicate with pictures and videos where older generations use email, chat, and text messaging.

These numbers also show that most people are not yet using their cellphones as a substitute for landline data usage. Certainly there are many individuals for whom the cellphone is their only source for data, but these numbers show average cellphone data usage far below average landline usage. I have a number of clients that track landline customer data usage and most of them are reporting average monthly downloads somewhere between 100 GB and 150 GB per household. Comcast recently reported that their 6-month rolling median data usage is 75 GB – meaning half of their customers use less than that, and half use more. All of the numbers in the above charts, while representing individuals and not families, are still far below those numbers.

Nielsen also tracked data usage by ethnicity, as follows:

‘                                  Cell Data        WiFi Data

Hispanic                       3.8 GB          10.1 GB

Native American         3.5 GB            7.3 GB

African-American        3.3 GB            9.1 GB

Asian                            2.3 GB            9.9 GB

White                           2.2 GB             8.6 GB

This shows that Hispanics, on average, are the largest users of data, both cellular and WiFi. Whites are at the bottom of the average usage chart.

Nielsen also was able to look into usage by geography. They didn’t publish all of the results, but did provide some interesting statistics. For example, they have some strong evidence now that cities with widespread WiFi networks can save customers money on their cellphone plans. For example, New York City has a lot of public WiFi and users in the city use WiFi 14% more than the national average while using cellular data 12% less. Contrast this with a city like Los Angeles with little public WiFi, and citizens there use WiFi 9% less than the national average and use cellular data 13% more. This kind of study can provide the basis for a city to quantify the benefits to the public for building a public WiFi network.