Ericsson Report Shows 80% Mobile Broadband Data Traffic Surge Since 2012

Global telecoms giant Ericsson has published its latest Mobility Report (Q3-2013) and revealed that the world is currently home to 2 billion Mobile Broadband subscribers (total mobile subscriptions of around 6.6bn) and that this will reach 8bn by 2019 (9.3bn total mobile subs) when 2.6bn will also be on 4G LTE services.

As we’ve come to expect the growth of Mobile Broadband and the popularity of Internet video streaming is helping to fuel a huge surge in data demand. Ericsson reports that mobile data traffic grew by around 10% between Q2 – Q3 2013 and was overall up by 80% between Q3 2012 and one year earlier.

Internet video services currently account for 35% of Mobile Broadband data traffic but this is already forecast to reach more than 50% by 2019. Meanwhile web browsing and social networking (facebook etc), which currently each constitute roughly 10% of total mobile data traffic, will remain at the same level in 2019. However it’s important to note that a typical web page will increase in data volume (i.e. more data-rich / higher quality content) over the same period.

At the end of last year some 55% of the world’s population was covered by 3G based Mobile Broadband (WCDMA/HSPA) services (10% or so were on 4G / LTE) and this is expected to reach 90% in 2019 (65% will connect via a 4G / LTE service). Check out the full report below for more details.

Ericsson Mobility Report Q3-2013
http://www.ericsson.com/res/docs/2013/ericsson-mobility-report-november-2013.pdf