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UK Mobile Data Speeds Average 5.8Mbps in 2015, Will Hit 18.1Mbps by 2020

Wednesday, Feb 3rd, 2016 (2:47 pm) - Score 729

Cisco’s annual Mobile Data Traffic Forecast (2015 – 2020) has today been published, which found that mobile data traffic in the United Kingdom reached 86.2 PetaBytes per month in 2015 and the average mobile connection speed topped 5.8Mbps (forecast to reach 18.1Mbps in 2020).

The report also found that the average mobile-connected end-user device generated 964MB (MegaBytes) of mobile data traffic per month in 2015, which they claim is up by 52% from 636MB in 2014. By comparison Ofcom reported a figure of 870MB for 2015 and 530MB for 2014 (here). At this point we’d urge some caution because Cisco’s figures are notorious for being quite wild.

Perhaps unsurprisingly consumer data traffic will account for 79% of the United Kingdom’s mobile data usage by 2020, compared with 77% at the end of 2015. Similarly online video content (YouTube etc.) will dominate, accounting for 77% of mobile data traffic by 2020 (up from 59% at the end of 2015).

Elsewhere 4G will hold 55.2% of total mobile connections by 2020 (up from 35.3% in 2015), which leaves 3G on 15.4% (down from to 37.7% in 2015) and older 2G services to hold just 10.7% (down from 24.1% in 2015).

Other UK Highlights from Cisco’s Report

* The average smartphone generated 1,204MB of mobile data traffic per month in 2015, up from 849MB per month in 2014. By comparison PC computers used generated 2,329MB in 2015 (up from 2,060MB in 2014) and Tablet users were roughly around the same level.

* The top 20% of mobile users generate more than half (59%) of the mobile data traffic per month. However the top 1% of mobile users now generate just 7% of mobile data traffic, down from 52% at the beginning of 2010.

* Mobile video traffic will reach 463.6PB per month by 2020, up from 50.6PB per month in 2015.

* Streaming Audio will be 5% of the United Kingdom’s mobile data traffic by 2020 (down from 7% at the end of 2015). Elsewhere Filesharing (P2P) will be 2% by 2020 (up from 1% at the end of 2015), while Web and other data will be 15% by 2020 (down from 33% at the end of 2015).

* There will be 106 million mobile-connected devices in 2015, rising to 206 million by 2020.

* In 2015 the average 4G speed was 20,403kbps (20.4Mbps), while the average 3G speed hit 3,452kbps and the average 2G speed was 161kbps. Come 2020 the average 4G speed will be 35,810 kbps, the average 3G speed will be 6,066 kbps and the average 2G speed will be 191kbps.

Finally it’s also claimed that the total number of public UK WiFi hotspots (including homespots) will grow 3-fold from 7.0 million in 2015 to 23.9 million by 2020. Assuming Virgin Media does eventually get around to launching their SuperHub based public WiFi hotspot / sharing then that would make for a max of around 10-13 million, but getting to 24 million seems a bit of a reach unless Sky Broadband and TalkTalk join the fun.

Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
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