Alert: Data Tsunami in Progress!
Image courtesy of André Pipa via the Creative Commons attribution license.
Are operator networks at risk of drowning in the coming data flood? Judging from the latest mobile data forecast from Cisco, they had better start preparing their networks now.
Globally, mobile data traffic will double every year through 2014, increasing 39 times between 2009 and 2014. Mobile data traffic will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 108% between 2009 and 2014.
Almost 66% of the world's mobile data traffic will be video by 2014. Mobile video will grow at a CAGR of 131% between 2009 and 2014. Mobile video has the highest growth rate of any application category measured within the Cisco VNI Forecast at this time (see Appendix A for applications details).
The Middle East and Africa will have the strongest growth of any region at 133% CAGR, followed by Asia Pacific at 119% and North America at 117% (see Appendix A for regional details).
In my opinion, the most astonishing figure from the report is: “Mobile data traffic is expected to grow to 3.6 exabytes per month by 2014, and over 2.3 of those are due to mobile video traffic”.
Better prepare the networks now!
-Subhi Andrews
Tags: mobile data, mobile video, operator network