A new study from Cisco suggests that worldwide mobile data traffic will increase 26-fold between 2010 and 2015, reaching 6.3 exabytes per month (or 75 exabytes per year) by 2015. That’s a compound annual growth rate of 92% and is the equivalent of 19 billion DVDs or 75 times the total amount of internet traffic in 2000. This dramatic rise is being driven by an increase in mobile internet-enabled devices and a growing demand for video services.
Cisco predicts that more than 5.6 billion personal devices will be connected to mobile networks by 2015, with an additional 1.5 billion machine-to-machine connections.
Today, the average mobile connection generates 65MB of traffic per month - but is expected to equivalent generate more than 17 times that amount by 2015. 66% of all mobile data traffic in 2015 is expected to be mobile video.
Suraj Shetty, vice president of Cisco’s worldwide service provider marketing, said “Consumers and business users continue to demonstrate a healthy demand for mobile data services. The fact that global mobile data traffic increased 2.6-fold from 2009 to 2010, nearly tripling for the third year in a row, confirms the strength of the mobile Internet. The seemingly endless bevy of new mobile devices, combined with greater mobile broadband access, more content, and applications of all types - especially video - are the key catalysts driving this remarkable growth.”