In St. Vincent and the Grenadines the amount of mobile data used depends not only on the service being consumed by the Telecommunications subscriber, but also on the provider of the telecommunications services.
In March 2017 the National Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (NTRC) in St. Vincent and the Grenadines carried out research to obtain information on data usage on the mobile telecommunications networks provided by Digicel and Flow.
The result of the research indicates that maximizing the amount of value or service you get for your data subscription depends on the service consumed as well as the network providing the service.
More specifically our research indicated that for music lovers using the Digicel network you can stream more songs than on the Flow network.
The Research
Research was done to find out the amount of data used in the following scenarios:
- 10 and 20 minutes on a WhatsApp call
- Streaming a 90 minute movie
- Streaming a song for 5 minutes.
The Results
Below are the results from the research showing data before and after the research was carried out and how much data is used per minute. With regards to the 90 Minute movie the data used for 5 minutes was measured and then the approximate data for 90 minutes calculated.
DATA USAGE USING Digicel PHONE
| DATA BEFORE | DATA AFTER | DATA USED | DATA USED Per Minute | |
| 10min WhatsApp call | 40.33 | 37.11 | 3.22 | 0.32 |
| 20min WhatsApp call | 75 | 68.36 | 6.64MB | 0.33MB |
| Streaming a 90mins movie. (can just check the data usage for 5 mins and expand) | 67.09 | 54.98 | 12.11MB for 5 Minutes
So therefore 90 minutes would be equal to 217.98MB |
2.42MB |
| streaming a song for 5mins | 48.54 | 45.12 | 3.42MB | 0.68MB |
DATA USAGE USING FLOW PHONE
| DATA BEFORE | DATA AFTER | DATA USED | DATA USED Per Minute | |
| 10min WhatsApp call | 55.20 | 55.20 | 0MB | 0MB |
| 20min WhatsApp call | 45.20 | 40.20 | 5MB | 0.25MB |
| Streaming a 90mins movie. (can just check the data usage for 5 mins and expand) | 74.99 | 64.99 | 10MB for 5 Minutes
So therefore 90 minutes would be equal to 180MB |
2MB |
| Streaming a song for 5mins | 75 | 69.91 | 5.09MB | 1.02MB |
In summary each provider used differing amounts of data in different aspects of the research:
- Flow used less data with regards to the ten (10) minute WhatsApp call
- Digicel used less data while doing a twenty (20) minutes WhatsApp call.
- Flow used half as much data for streaming the video
- Digicel used less data in streaming the 5 minute song.
What does the results mean?
For our consumers, both providers offer one day plans that provide 100 MB of data. This effectively means using the Digicel network you will get more value for your money if you are interested in streaming songs as you can stream about 30 songs on their network as compared to 20 on the Flow network.
If technology articles such as these are of interest to you, please enter your email address below. Your subscription is free and gives you access to our monthly newsletter, telecommunications or technology articles published as well as telecommunications promotions that are run from time to time.