Monthly data usage by smartphones surpassed 400,000 terabytes for the first time in January, according to data from the Ministry of Science and ICT, boosted by growing use of video streaming services and mobile games.

The data traffic amounted to 403,812 TB in January, up 1.5 percent from the previous month, the data showed.

The January figure increased 28.7 percent on-year, and marked a 17-fold increase from usage in January 2012, the data showed.

Data traffic on smartphones that support LTE, or 4G, accounted for 99.8 percent of the total in January, with the average traffic per subscriber standing at 8.1 gigabytes.

The sharp rise of wireless traffic in recent years is due to LTE smartphones, with an increasing number of users subscribing to unlimited data plans to enjoy streaming video services and mobile games.



(khnews@heraldcorp.com)