How Much Data Does A Buck Buy With A Smartphone? How Much Are You Actually Paying Per Megabyte?

We wanted to find out the real prices that consumers are paying for Smartphone data in 2011. To discover these rates, the goal was to ascertain two metrics: 1) The “real world” average cost per megabyte for Smartphone data users on each carrier, and 2) How much Smartphone data per dollar spent is actually used—in other words, how many megabytes does each dollar spent on a plan actually buy on average?

Sprint seems to emerge as the data bargain here, probably because of the carrier’s fast 4G speeds that speed up data consumption, facilitating the use of more data. We think a usability issue like this may speak to a main reason why so many people are clearly not using nearly as much data as they’re buying: it’s not that people don’t want to use the data–it’s that they’re hampered by slow network speeds. And the value added for a consumer is tremendous when more data is used (without overages) as opposed to paying for data and not using it. You’re paying one set price for the plan, so the less of your allotted data you use, then the higher the effective price rises on the megabytes that you do use. Drive down the effective per-megabyte price you pay by using all of what you buy.