In trying to keep up with all of the changes in the telecom industry, I come across some interesting (sometimes worthless) information. This is a re-print from Validas. Validas.com isolated the Top 10 states with the highest average data downloads per user. This week we threw those results onto a map of the country as split between Red (Republican) and Blue (Democrat) states in the 2008 Presidential election. In an age of politics so hostile that our government nearly shuts down as a result of partisan hackery, it’s striking to learn that Democrats and Republicans are unified as Americans in how we engage our wireless technology, an integral part of our daily lives. As the map below indicates, Americans in states that voted Republican average about 447 Megabytes (MB) per month in downloads. And states that voted Democrat? Check this out: 449 MB per person, per month.
So for all our clamoring, we tend to live our lives as wireless consumers pretty similarly. Our experience as Americans in today’s modern technological society, and how we engage that society, is remarkably similar. So much for derogatory stereotypes about Republican states as “country” or “backwards” and Democratic states as “elitist” or “out-of-touch.” While small percentages of people will always pack the extremes ideologically, and while our nation certainly varies regionally in many ways, our wireless consumer profile of the average American suggests we’re closer than we might expect.
Besides our commonalities, the wireless usage map might also tell us about our differences–here when it comes to selecting the President. Think about this: Of the Top 10 states with the greatest average data usage per person, six voted Democrat (including Washington, D.C.) and four voted Republican in 2008. Can we predict our next President based on which party appears more often in that Top 10 list? It works for 2008! Or consider this: Two “swing” states with razor-thin 2008 victory margins are included in that Top 10: Missouri (voted Republican, with 539 MB average monthly usage per person) and Virginia (voted Democrat, with 654 MB average month usage per person). When the swing states in the Top 10 are split down the middle like this, will the Presidency go to whichever party wins the state with the greater average monthly use per person? Again, works in ’08! Stay tuned for future Validas usage studies to determine if these kinds of conjectured patterns and predictors do actually exist. Will Validas be able to call the next President of the United States based on Americans’ wireless usage?
For anyone interested in the methodology of the study; while Americans from all 50 states use Validas to evaluate and reduce their cell bills, the study focused on those states with heavy usage of Validas to give accurate results about the average data consumed per person. Thirty-eight states (again including Washington, D.C.) had enough data to qualify, while seven Republican and six Democrat states did not and were excluded.
