Worthless wireless numbers

I’ve always questioned the need to gather huge samples of data to try and figure out what the average consumer is or isn’t doing. In fact, most of us are pretty average (though we hate to admit it).  So I often find my own data represents the norm of the world. T-Mobile allows you to download your mobile billing data and I’m a big mobile user and was pondering what does a typical power user look like. So off I went and downloaded into Excel all my calls over the past months. Surprising, my usage pattern month to month doesn’t change much.

I’ll share some summaries with you and you can use it in your next PowerPoint chart and tell everyone that you got these statistics from the Internet and everyone will believe this to be totally true. Remember that 97% of all statistics are made up.

Power Mobile User
Burning close to the edge of my minute bucket every month (between 85-95% usage of the total minute allotment). I’ve seen figures indicating that the normal consumer uses only 75% of their typical monthly bucket.

I make/receive between 450-500 calls each month about 30% of those calls are incoming. Surprising to me 60% of all my calls (in and outgoing) were only 1 minute (or less), which tells me someone either got my voicemail, or I got theirs. These 1 minute calls accounting for a whopping 20% of my total minutes used each month. There must be some new business opportunity here. I hate voicemail, hate to get them, hate to leave them.

For all my dialing, I only dial about 65-75 different telephone numbers each month. What was interesting is that my Top 5 (most frequently dialed or received nubmers) accounted for 50% of my total minute usage and the Top 15 accounted for 85% of my usage. I don’t have many friends, but I stay in touch with the few I do have!

Average call duration was 2.7 minutes, but if you took out the 1 minute calls, call duration jumped to a whooping 6.0 minutes (I like to yak if I get you on the phone).

Not sure what any of this means, but remember you can use these facts in your presentations and tell everyone you found them on the Internet. They’ll believe you.