What really happens to your data bundles?

Look around you. One of your friends has probably cursed at a telecom provider for allegedly "stealing" their data bundle.

So do telecoms "steal" our bundles? No! The answer is you and how you use your smartphone.

Peter Mutabazi, a team leader at MTN Uganda's customer experience department says many smartphone users run down your data bundle without realizing it.

"Every application on your smartphone is automatically configured to pick new updates. All this consumes data. You can alter this by changing the settings on your phone, so that you manually have to update your applications," he reasons.

Facebook is one site that many Ugandans browse on their gadgets. The social media giant recently updated their application, which has a feature many smartphone users are oblivious to that fact that it consumes a lot of their mobile data, says Mubangizi.

"When you browse Facebook, and then you pause on a video for a few seconds, the video automatically plays. This consumes a lot of data, yet many people do not seem to understand it," he says.

"You can change these settings on your Facebook application."

WhatsApp images

WhatsApp is the most frequently used messaging app in Uganda, and indeed, the rest of the world.

"WhatsApp is automatically configured to download images. Some people belong to five WhatsApp groups, so if someone else belongs to all those groups, and they share one image to all those groups, your phone will download five similar images at the same time. So if that one image is 2MBs, you will find yourself using 10MBs on one image," explains Mubangizi.

"You can change this by disabling the automatic download for these images on your WhatsApp."

Finally, you should not keep applications on your phone that you do not use. Only keep that ones that you use so that you can save your data bundles.