Glossary A–ZLetter D
Data volume (data allowance)
Data volume is the total amount of data transferred over a connection in a given period; for mobile contracts, the data allowance is the amount available each month at full speed.
It is counted in megabytes or gigabytes. Bandwidth says how fast data is transferred, data volume how much.
It matters when screens are connected over a mobile network. Data is used when polling the management software, downloading new media, installing updates and for anything that comes live from the network, such as web pages, weather or streams. Playing files that have already been downloaded uses nothing. A worked example: a 30-second video at 8 Mbit/s is about 30 megabytes; distributed to ten screens, that makes 300 megabytes.
Operators should monitor usage per device, produce videos at a suitable bitrate, avoid replacing large files unnecessarily and adapt the polling interval to the connection. Firmware updates and reloading all content after a reset use a lot in one go. Live content is the biggest unknown on a mobile connection, because its consumption grows with every minute it runs.