Close
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Menu
Search
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Latest News
    • Mobile
    • Networking
    • PC Hardware

    Mobile Data Traffic to Grow Eighteenfold Over Five Years: Cisco

    By
    Michelle Maisto
    -
    February 15, 2012
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      Mobile Internet data traffic is increasing at a rate that tests a mere mortal’s math prowess. With increases in streaming content, growing connections from mobile device and machine-to-machine (M2M) modules and powerful mobile devices leading the way, Cisco Systems reports in a new Visual Networking Index Forecast that worldwide mobile data traffic is expected to increase eighteenfold over the next five years, reaching an annual run rate of 130 exabytes by 2016.

      An exabyte equals 1 quintillion bytes. A quintillion is 10 to 18th power; it has 18 zeroes, compared with a trillion, which has 12. To get your brain around these numbers, this mobile data traffic is the equivalent of 33 billion DVDs, 4.3 quadrillion (that would be 10 to the 15th power) MP3 files or 813 quadrillion Short Message Service texts.

      So, really a lot of traffic, then.

      The number of connected mobile devices is expected to exceed the number of people on Earth by 2016€”10 billion devices to 7.3 billion folks, according to the Feb. 14 report. Additionally, mobile cloud traffic, which currently accounts for 45 percent of mobile data traffic, is expected to grow 28 fold by 2016, accounting for a 71 percent share of traffic.

      The increased use of smartphones and tablets, faster networks and video-rich applications is also increasingly making traffic generators of us all.

      €œBy 2016, 60 percent of mobile users€”3 billion people worldwide€”will belong to the ‘Gigabyte Club,’ each generating more than 1GB of mobile data traffic per month,” Suraj Shetty, Cisco’s vice president of product and solutions marketing, wrote in the report. “By contrast, in 2011, only one-half percent of mobile users qualified.”

      The Index additionally forecasts:

      €¢ The amount of traffic added to the mobile Internet between 2015 and 2016 will be three times the estimated size of the entire mobile Internet in 2012.

      €¢ Wireless devices and nodes will be the primary contributors to traffic. By 2016, there will be more than 8 billion handheld or personal mobile devices and nearly 2 billion M2M connections, including in-car GPS systems, asset-tracking systems and medical applications.

      €¢ By 2016, approximately 90 percent of mobile data traffic will be driven by smartphones, laptops and other portable devices.

      €¢ By 2016, 5 percent of mobile data traffic will be driven by M2M traffic. Another 5 percent will be driven by residential broadband mobile gateways.

      €¢ By 2016, 71 percent of mobile data traffic will be mobile video.

      €¢ Tablets alone will generate traffic that will grow by a factor of 62 by 2016, representing the highest growth rate of any device in the forecast.

      Necessary to supporting so much traffic, said the report, will be offloading traffic to fixed/WiFi networks€”something that was done with 11 percent of traffic in 2011; in itself, fixed/WiFi traffic was more than 18 times greater than cellular traffic. By 2016, 22 percent is expected to be downloaded to fixed/WiFi networks.

      Finally, increases in traffic are also expected to drive connection speeds, as they have already; the average mobile connection speed doubled in 2011, and by 2016, it’s expected to increase ninefold. Excellent news. And the average smartphone connection speed? In 2011 it was 1,344K bps. In 2012 that’s expected to rise to 1,829K bps, and in 2016 to a very quick 5,244K bps.

      Avatar
      Michelle Maisto
      Michelle Maisto has been covering the enterprise mobility space for a decade, beginning with Knowledge Management, Field Force Automation and eCRM, and most recently as the editor-in-chief of Mobile Enterprise magazine. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and in her spare time obsesses about food. Her first book, The Gastronomy of Marriage, if forthcoming from Random House in September 2009.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Android

      Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro: Durability for Tough...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 5, 2020 0
      Have you ever dropped your phone, winced and felt the pain as it hit the sidewalk? Either the screen splintered like a windshield being...
      Read more
      Cloud

      Why Data Security Will Face Even Harsher...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 1, 2020 0
      Who would know more about details of the hacking process than an actual former career hacker? And who wants to understand all they can...
      Read more
      Cybersecurity

      How Veritas Is Shining a Light Into...

      eWEEK EDITORS - September 25, 2020 0
      Protecting data has always been one of the most important tasks in all of IT, yet as more companies become data companies at the...
      Read more
      Big Data and Analytics

      How NVIDIA A100 Station Brings Data Center...

      Zeus Kerravala - November 18, 2020 0
      There’s little debate that graphics processor unit manufacturer NVIDIA is the de facto standard when it comes to providing silicon to power machine learning...
      Read more
      Apple

      Why iPhone 12 Pro Makes Sense for...

      Wayne Rash - November 26, 2020 0
      If you’ve been watching the Apple commercials for the past three weeks, you already know what the company thinks will happen if you buy...
      Read more
      eWeek


      Contact Us | About | Sitemap

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      Terms of Service | Privacy Notice | Advertise | California - Do Not Sell My Information

      © 2021 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×