Cisco: Mobile Data Traffic Nearly Tripled in 2010

 

Cisco published its VNI forecast (see "Cisco Visual Networking Index Forecast Projects 26-Fold Growth in Global Mobile Data Traffic From 2010 to 2015" - here) with tons of information concerning the growth of mobile data. Predicting the future is not easy, as we know, and totaling global traffic is a concept which is not easy to understand - this is why Cisco uses statements like "The updated research projects that annual global mobile data traffic will reach 6.3 exabytes per month, or an annual run rate of 75 exabytes, by 2015. That amount is the equivalent of 19 billion DVDs or 536 quadrillion SMS text messages or 75 times the amount of global Internet Protocol traffic (fixed and mobile) generated in the year 2000".

However facts about the past (i.e. year 2010) are more tangible, and Cisco finds that "Global mobile data traffic increased 159 percent from calendar year 2009 to calendar year 2010 to 237 petabytes per month, or the equivalent of 60 million DVDs" - 2.6X growth is clear even without the DVD illustration.

So I found the following table particularly interesting (taken from "Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2010-2015" - here):

"Although last year’s Cisco VNI Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast had projected strong growth in mobile data traffic in 2010 (149 percent), growth was even stronger than anticipated (159 percent). Even more surprising was the strong growth in markets that already had relatively high mobile data adoption and use. For example, last year’s forecast projected 120 percent mobile data traffic growth in Japan in 2010, but we now estimate that the growth was 137 percent. As shown in Table 1, mobile operators and content providers in all regions have continued to report strong traffic growth."