What is the cause of the internet data usage explosion?

“When I was small, 2GB of data was too much for a month, but nowadays even 2GB a day is not sufficient. Why is too much data being consumed for every task?”

Your observation is correct. However this phenomenon is not limited to the internet. In just about every industry as the production and supply has become more efficient the consumption has grown to match it.

Back in those days there were few video streaming websites,nothing like Instagram or facebook to get people to actively use the network. The Internet was limited to simple messaging and even the infrastructure that supported it was expensive.

File sharing was big but was only used by people who were good with computers. For everyone else hard disks were passed around ;)

A lot of things have happened since then

Huge investment in fiber optic cables have made the internet cheaper for more people. So optimizing the amount of data sent over the wire is no longer a priority for Devs.

Devices have become easier to use. Mobile phones can be carried anywhere and be used by almost anyone so more people are using the internet more often. And hence more consumption of data.

New services have come up that can consume a lot of data like streaming apps. Netflix,YouTube etc and they are quite popular with users so again more data consumed by users. These days people stream even live matches (IPL etc) on mobile.

Critical infrastructure that powers the internet -- servers,routers cables etc have become cheaper so more of them can be deployed enhancing the capacity of the network. Since the users get a smooth browsing experience they don't think twice about using it more and more.

Due to all these reasons, the 2GB limit is exhausted pretty quickly.

Network operators were too late to recognize this trend and kept on charging fees for every message sent, even though the data being transmitted was next to nothing compared to other interactive internet applications. And they paid the price for it with things like whats app and messenger quickly becoming popular tools for communication ,replacing SMS and calls.

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Notes by Akshat Jiwan Sharma

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