Imagine this: One of your employees just flew across the country for an important conference. He got up super early to catch his flight, spent the rest of the day in meetings, and now he’s exhausted. He gets to his hotel room and all he wants to do is get into bed and watch a movie until he falls asleep, but the hotel TV selection is terrible. Tired and annoyed, your employee whips out his company-owned tablet and starts streaming a Netflix movie in HD…WITHOUT connecting to the hotel WiFi.
This is all fine and dandy for your employees, but when you get your company’s data bill you’re not too thrilled about all the overage charges. Odds are, if your employees are constantly exceeding your company’s data cap, they’re streaming with company devices. Who can blame them? Sites like Netflix and YouTube can be pretty tempting at times.
But can streaming sites really eat through ALL that data? As a matter of fact, yes they can. Allow us to shed some light on just how much data your employees use while streaming.
Data Usage
If you search online for the the average data usage of streaming sites, you’ll find a lot of conflicting numbers. Some sources say that video streaming sites use around 350 MB/hour on average, some say 120 MB/hour and some claim that their sites use an amount somewhere in the middle.
Whatever the real amount, we do know that they use up a TON of data, and fast.
How can you figure out exactly how much data your employees’ favorite streaming sites use up? Well, that depends on both the network on which they’re streaming, and the quality of the video they are streaming.
Network.
In general, if your employees are streaming using a 4G LTE network, they’re more likely to eat through more of your company’s data than they would be if they were using a 3G network.
Why? Well, when your employees stream on 4G, they’re streaming at a speed up to 10 times faster than 3G networks. Therefore, your employees are able to stream more video in a shorter amount of time. The high speed of a 4G network eliminates pauses and buffer times, making your employees more likely to stream more content. The end result? Your employees keep on streaming to their hearts content, not even thinking about the amount of data they’ve used up. After all, time flies when you’re watching Netflix, right?
Also, devices that run on 4G networks often have bandwidth that supports higher quality videos, which use up more data. Streaming sites might recognize that your employee’s device can handle these high quality videos, and automatically adjust the video to accommodate their device’s higher bandwidth. So even if an employee streams just one video on a 4G network, they’ll still probably use up more data.
Quality.
As we just mentioned, the higher the quality, the more data you chew through. Why? Well, higher quality videos are made up of more pixels, and while these pixels give the user a crystal clear image on their screen, they also do a number on your company’s data bill.
But how much more data could these high quality videos actually use?
According to Netflix, users use up 3 GB per HOUR when streaming in High Definition (HD), and 7 GB/hour when streaming in Ultra HD, whereas streaming in Standard Definition (SD) only uses up 0.7 GB/hour. Depending on the amount of data your company purchases monthly, the quality of the videos that your employees stream can really affect the amount of data that they use.
The obvious solution to this issue would be to just stream everything in SD and avoid using a ton of data, but sadly it’s not that simple. Some sites, like Netflix, allow users to adjust their data usage settings and only stream in SD, but other sites automatically adjust to the device’s bandwidth, forcing users to stream in HD against their will.
So, what can you do about all of this?
Streaming sites can cost your company a ton of money in overage fees, but have no fear! There are a few things you can do to curb the data usage of your employees, and keep these pesky entertainments sites from using up all of your company’s data.
1. Find out if the sites they’re using allow them to adjust data settings. It might sound kind of annoying and tedious, but simply adjusting the settings on a website could save your business a whole lot of money in overage fees.
2. Have your employees connect to WiFi when possible. This should be a universal rule for all of your company’s devices. Whenever possible, it’s always better to use tablets and smartphones on WiFi, which doesn’t use up any data at all.
3. Monitor the data usage of your employees. Many companies do not allow their employees to use company devices for streaming sites, but if no one is monitoring their data usage, who is going to keep them from doing so? You can monitor the data usage of your employees with a Mobile Device Management (MDM) software. Softwares like AirWatch and SOTI allow companies to directly monitor the data usage of their employees, and control what they can and cannot do with their devices.
DataXoom is a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) that offers affordable mobile data solutions exclusively to businesses. In addition to providing your business with mobile data, DataXoom’s content management capabilities allow you to whitelist and blacklist sites as an affordable alternative to MDM software, so you can ensure that your employees aren’t using their company tablet for video streaming. Interested in learning what else DataXoom can offer your business? Give us a call or drop us a note today!
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