MTN, Airtel, Glo & 9mobile Are Not Swallowing Your Data; Na You Dey Do Yourself

Every now and then, one hears someone complain that MTN or Airtel or Glo data finishes fast these days. And they lodge complaints with customer care and rant on social media. But are the mobile networks the ones swallowing your data?

It is hilarious, really. Let me have fun taking a jab at you first. Sebi when we ask you to read text content, you get upset and say you prefer video content? So you ignore text content and binge on video content instead. Then you come back to complain when your eyes start turning-on-in-own after your data disappears like magic.

You don’t like Twitter (it will always be Twitter to some of us, the same way it will always be NEPA, regardless of how much it vexes IKeja Electric, Eko Electric and others), because it is boring. Why? Text is boring, you say.

So, you spend your hours and days jumping from one TikTok video to another, and scrolling endlessly on Instagram.

Tiktok videos range from anything as much as 10MB all the way to over 100MB. Watch 10, 20, or 30 of those in a day and you really should not be complaining about your data plan being depleted faster.

And guess what? Video file sizes keep increasing because they are being recorded with higher resolution cameras – 4k, 8k, etc. The sizes will keep growing and your data will keep finishing even faster. Unless you have an unlimited data plan, you will pay more and more for data.

It is what it is. You cannot eat your cake and have it. In a connected digital multimedia age, you will consume more data and spend more money on Internet access. You will not escape it.

TikTok. Instagram. Facebook Stories and reels. Snapchat. Netflix. YouTube. Prime video. Showmax. These are the main culprits swallowing your data.

Background processes too

And, yes; it is true that background activities in your phone also eat up a lot of your data. Well, you want sleeker user interfaces; right? You want your phone to be able to connect to all sorts of services; right? That’s the price you pay. Actually, it is only one of the different prices you have to pay.

Privacy: you are the product

One other price you pay is the loss of privacy. Your location, your personal identity, and lots more, are currently been milked in the background by your Android smartphone and iPhone. Unless you want to stop using those and pick up a feature phone or one of those rare, often expensive privacy phones, you are the product being sold and your data is the means through which it happens in the background.

In short, you are in the Matrix. You are plugged in all the time. Well, at least, as long as there is an internet connection.

So, as long as you are obsessed with video content, you will use a lot of data and spend more money. Your best bet is an unlimited internet connection.

Give us unlimited mobile data plans!

Honestly, it is about time that MTN, Airtel, Glo, and 9mobile consider offering regular smartphone subscribers unlimited data plans. This is the solution to this problem. A fixed fee monthly for truly unlimited data consumption, without one of those terrible fair usage policies that make the plans useless.

I am not talking about unlimited plans that require a router, like Airtel offers. What is this obsession with selling routers? Why not let regular phone users buy unlimited data plans that they can use on their smartphones and also hotspot to other devices?

All it takes is for one of these mobile network operators to do it first and the others will jump in. Who is going to bell the cat?

We want video content. We want more and more of it. Dear mobile network operators, give us unlimited mobile data plans!

PS: Since you love video content so much, please follow my YouTube Channel!