Voice vs Data: Estimates of Media Usage and Network Traffic

This paper reports on the results of surveys of the media usage by two small groups of students, one group in New York City and the other in Los Angeles. The voice and data traffic implications of the results are estimated. When converted to bits, the telephone traffic was much greater than the data traffic. An attempt is made to reconcile the findings with network usage data that implies that voice exceeds data. INTRODUCTION The popular conception is that data traffic nearly, if not already, exceeds voice traffic on backbone networks. However, the results of research reported in this paper imply that usergenerated voice traffic exceeds data traffic. This finding is the result of asking real users to estimate their usage of a wide variety of media and then converting media usage to the common measure of bits. Media usage was surveyed for students in New York City and in Los Angeles. Other than significant differences in radio listening, e-mails, and downloads, the media usage was quite similar. Telephone usage (wired and wireless) was nearly an hour per day. When converted to bits, the telephone traffic was much greater than the data traffic over the Internet. MEDIA USAGE SURVEYS Two media usage surveys were conducted: one of MBA students in New York City and the other of undergraduate communications students in Los Angeles. A short, one-page, selfadministered questionnaire was distributed to the students. The students were asked to "think about a usual average day within the past 7 days" and then to estimate their "total use for that day for the following media." The media categories were the telephone (excluding their cell phone); the cell phone; the Internet; television; radio; music; and newspaper, magazines, and books. Some of the categories were subdivided. The complete wording of the questionnaire is shown in Table 1.