UK Mobile Data Traffic Tops 0.9 ExaBytes in 2014 as Avg Speeds Hit 2.5Mb

Cisco has today published their annual Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast (2014 – 2019), which reported that mobile data traffic in the United Kingdom reached 74.2 PetaBytes (PB) per month in 2014 (0.9 Exabytes per year) and this will rise to 634.4PB by 2019 (7.6 Exabytes per year). Internet video traffic continues to be the main driver.

According to the report, the average mobile-connected end-user device generated 961 MegaBytes (MB) of mobile data traffic per month in 2014, which is up 55% from 619 MegaBytes per month in 2013, and this will reach 7,257MB per month by 2019.

The United Kingdom was also home to 56.4 Million mobile users in 2014 (89% of the total population), which is up 2% from 55.5 Million (88% of the population) in 2013 and this figure is expected to reach 59.1 Million (91% of the United Kingdom’s population) by 2019. Interestingly the top 20% of mobile users currently generate 85% of the UK’s mobile data traffic.

Unsurprisingly the biggest mobile data traffic hog in the UK is video streaming and related video services, which accounted for 57% of our mobile traffic in 2014 and by 2019 it’s predicted to account for a staggering 75%! By comparison website browsing gobbled 35% of traffic in 2014 and this will fall to just 17% by 2019. It’s worth noting that P2P File Sharing held just 1% of the total last year and will rise to 2% in 2019, while streamed audio accounted to 7% in 2014 and will fall to 6% in 2019.

As for Mobile Broadband performance, the average connection speed was apparently just 2.5Mbps (Megabits per second) in 2014 and curiously Cisco predicts a slow growth (12% CAGR) to reach around 4.38Mbps by 2019.

In 2014 the average 4G speed was 11.8Mbps, the average 3G speed was 2.9Mbps and the average 2G speed was 0.16Mbps. But come 2019 Cisco predicts that the average 4G speed will be 20.7Mbps, the average 3G speed will be 5Mbps and the average 2G speed will be 0.19Mbps.

In the United Kingdom, 4G will account for 88.2% of total mobile data traffic by 2019, compared to 42.2% at the end of 2014.

Comparison Summary of Global Mobile Traffic (All Countries)

• There will be 5.2 billion global mobile users, up from 4.3 billion in 2014
• There will be 11.5 billion mobile-ready devices and connections, more than 4 billion more than there were in 2014
• The average mobile connection speed will increase 2.4-fold, from 1.7 Mbps in 2014 to 4.0 Mbps by 2019
• Global mobile IP traffic will reach an annual run rate of 292 ExaBytes, up from 30EB in 2014

It’s also interesting to contrast the UK’s speed results with that of Cisco’s global data. For example, mobile connection speeds globally will average 0.11Mbps for 2G, 5Mbps for 3G and 14.2Mbps for 4G come 2019. So at least we’ll still be ahead of most, although Cisco’s predictions should always be taken with a big pinch of salt.