Report: US consumers swallowed 2.5 GB/month of cellular data in Q1 on average

US wireless consumers on average chewed through around 2.5 GB of cellular data per month in the first quarter, according to industry analyst Chetan Sharma, up from an average of 2 GB per month at the end of 2014.

"In the US, it took roughly 20 years to reach the 1 GB/user/month mark," Sharma wrote in a research report. "However, the second GB mark has been reached in less than four quarters. An entire year's worth of mobile data traffic in 2007 is now reached in less than 75 hours." Sharma's figures are roughly in line with those from Cisco Systems. In its latest Visual Networking Index Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast report, which was released in February, Cisco found that in 2014, consumers in North America used on average 1.89 GB of mobile data per month in 2014. Cisco thinks that figure will surge ahead to a little more than 11 GB on average in 2019. According to Sharma, data made up 62 percent of all wireless carrier service revenues in the U.S. in the first quarter, up from 60 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014 and around 50 percent in the year-ago period.