Have you ever felt like you’re not getting the most from your mobile phone contract? This will make you feel a little better. Collectively, the UK wastes 143 million gigabytes of mobile data every single month. This averages out as a staggering 3.4GB of data for every single person who has a mobile phone.

The study which was conducted by the comparison website uSwitch interviewed more than 5,000 UK adults. More than 1,000 of these people were unware as to how much data they were actually paying for each month. Over a quarter of the people surveyed didn’t even know how much data they used every month.

You may have heard that some mobile phone operators allow their customers to carry forward any unused data. Virgin Media and Sky Mobile both offer this. Vodafone and O2 also offer this feature for their pay-as-you-go customers. This is how all mobile operators should be playing the game. The operators who allow you to use the data that you’ve already paid for are advertising it as if it is a form of generosity. But if you’ve already paid for your data then you should be able to use it!

Young Adults Waste the Most

We live in an age when most young adults are permanently glued to their mobile phones. So you may be forgiven for thinking that they make the most out of their generous data allowances. What’s surprising is the fact that out of the people surveyed it’s the younger adults who were wasting the most. The average 18-34 year old is paying for just over 7.5 GB per month. However they are only using around half of that (3.6GB).

The older adults were not as wasteful, but it was clear that they were much more confused about their allowances. Over a quarter of over 55s surveyed didn’t know how much data allowance they have every month.

No Idea

Out of the people surveyed, around 8 per cent people had absolutely no idea that they wasted so much data each month. Over a third of people who dad a data allowance within their contract didn’t log their internet usage in any way. Shockingly, half of these didn’t even know that they could access the internet with their mobile phone! 30% of people who didn’t know how much data they used, used less than 1GB per month.

It seems that it’s very easy for consumers to worry about going over their prescribed data allowance, so they are getting far more than they need when they sign their contracts. The result of this is not only a waste of month every month, but the cost of the extra data that they are not using may be negating any other offers or deals that enticed them to go with that particular contract in the first place.

If you’re like one of the many interviewed who had little clue about their data usage, then it’s time to do something about it as it could be costing you money. The best thing to do is to monitor your usage over two or three months so that you have an idea of how much data you actually use. You can then contact your network operator to reduce your data and monthly payment accordingly. If your usage varies month by month, then there are ways to pay for the data that you use as opposed to adding a huge bolt on every month.