Last year, giffgaff, the contract-free mobile network ‘run by you’, released new research that revealed global mobile data usage was set to increase by 720% by 2021.

With 5G set to launch globally in 2020, the mobile network has extended this research even further and discovered that, based on theoretical speed increases, mobile users will be consuming a staggering 98.34 GB of data per month by 2025.

giffgaff’s research showed that the largest increase in data usage would be in video streaming. In 2017, users consumed 0.83 GB’s worth of their data on video streaming; this is expected to rise to 24.76 GB by 2021.

Based on current usage rates, giffgaff predicts that by 2025, when streaming in 4k will be readily available for mobile users, an amazing 73.87 GB of mobile data will be used for video streaming.

Messaging will see a meteoric increase, too. In 2017, messaging consumed 0.46 GB’s worth of data; by 2025, it is predicted that this figure will have risen to 40.63 GB.

Data usage for browsing is also set to skyrocket compared to where it is now. Last year, a mere 0.34 GB of data was consumed for online browsing; this is expected to peak at 14.17 GB by 2025.

Chief Commercial Officer at giffgaff, Kim Faura, commented: “This new research shows a monumental shift in how people will use mobile phones in the next seven years – not just as communication devices, but as connectivity hubs.

“For millions of people, using a mobile phone for music and video streaming is more important than its traditional use for calls and texts. With the launch of 5G, we will finally have the bandwidth to deliver speeds even faster than home broadband.”