Social networks and games dominate mobile broadband activity

Mobile mayhem

Social media and social gaming dominates mobile broadband usage, according to new figures from Three.

It is perhaps no surprise to learn that Facebook is the most popular service used by customers accessing the web via mobile broadband on their computer or tablet, according to the amount of data customers use when browsing those websites.

However, some people may be intrigued to learn that social gaming site Zynga, which is now valued higher than EA, features among the top 5 sites used on Three's mobile broadband service, beating Google.com, which only generated a quarter of the volume of browsing data traffic compared to Facebook.

Three said almost 2,500 terabytes (2,500,000 GB) of data passed though its mobile broadband network in June and consequently the figures differ from those measuring site visits via fixed line internet usage, where Google always comes out top.

Here is a table of top sites visited in one week in July 2010 by Three's mobile broadband users, based on browsing data usage.

Charlotte Blanchard, Three's director of internet services and products, said: "We'd expect to see a difference in usage patterns between fixed and mobile Internet access, but the dominance of social gaming shown in these browsing figures is particularly surprising. It shows that, for many, keeping up to date with friends or regular gameplay on the move is now more important than accessing their emails via Hotmail or keeping up to date with the news."

"The volumes of data we're looking at show the importance of Mobile Broadband as an internet access channel - with nearly seven terabytes of Facebook browsing data being generated in just one week - and that doesn't count the up and download volume," she added.