A new study from iGR predicts that amount of mobile data traffic worldwide will reach 7 million terabytes per month by 2016; a figure that’s 16 times bigger than last year’s mobile data usage. Global mobile data traffic in 2011 averaged 433,000 terabytes per month.
The figures include all mobile data networks, including 3G and 4G LTE, but exclude any WiFi traffic that’s been offloaded by mobile networks.
Iain Gillott, president and founder of iGR, said “To the casual observer, it seems obvious that mobile data traffic is increasing simply due to the proliferation of smartphones and tablets. But the reality is that far more bandwidth is used on mobile data networks than many people believe. And we expect the situation to get worse – the growth for mobile data traffic in all regions of the world is strong, resulting in an astronomical growth in global mobile data traffic.”
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