Mobile data usage was up 30% in the second quarter of this year, thanks in part to streaming video and music.
That's according to tech firm Allot, which has released its Global Mobile Broadband Traffic Report for Q2 2009, using data from its operator customers.
It claims that streaming is the fastest growing form of mobile data usage, up 58% quarter-on-quarter. However, downloads from mobile sites are still the most popular use for mobile data.
It seems that mobile broadband users - particularly those with 3G dongles hanging out of their laptops or netbooks - aren't so different from home broadband users.
Or, as the report puts it: "What is most noticeable from the data gathered in this report is that subscribers are treating their mobile networks much the same as they treat their fixed networks."
That doesn't mean to say they're happy with it, though. A separate piece of research from Broadband Genie in the UK found that 63.8% of users are unhappy with the speed of their mobile broadband.
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In fact, only 11.5% said they were happy with its speed, while 24.7% said they didn't know.
"The public perception of mobile broadband is often of a service that it comparable in speed and stability to fixed-line broadband, which simply isn't the case - and won't be for the forseeable future," says the report.
In short, then, people want to use their mobile broadband connections to stream video and music, as they would at home. And are thus bound to be sorely disappointed for now. Which is nice.
