The Business Traveler Connectivity Cost Index shows that those of us needing to use smartphones, tablets and PCs while on the move are collectively wasting $1.33 billion a year in charges.

The report, compiled by Rethink Technology Research and iPass, focuses solely on North American and European business travelers and estimates that an American traveling internationally on business is racking up between $828 and $1,780 a month in cellular roaming charges.

For Europeans traveling internationally, the monthly costs could be as high as $2,130 a month.

The average business traveler now consumes 4.5GB of data a month.

“The amount of mobile data consumed by business is growing rapidly, as more employees adopt the use of cloud-based mobile applications of all kinds and look to replicate enterprise working environments on their smartphones, tablets, and laptops,” said Gary Griffiths, iPass CEO.

That’s also why free wi-fi is a problem. As well as being unsecure, it’s often too slow to allow anyone, holidaymakers or business travelers alike, to do much more than check emails.

“Around 50% of hotels who say they offer free Wi-Fi charge a premium for a service fast enough to actually work on,” said Peter White, Principal Analyst and Founder, Rethink Technology Research.

The report calculates that if travelers all used global roaming subscription services, as much as $1.33 billion could be saved annually.