Nokia Siemens Networks has just issued a press release saying that they’ve just singed up their 500 millionth mobile data user and that if current growth rates are maintained, by 2011 mobile data will surpass voice traffic. This year Nokia Siemens Networks expects mobile data traffic to hit 400 petabytes (400 million gigabytes) and that by 2011 that figure should grow 500% to reach 2,000 petabytes (2 billion gigabytes), surpassing an estimated 2011 voice traffic figure of 1,200 petabytes. With devices like the iPhone, and the industry pushing to bring smartphones to an even lower price segment, while at the same time making today’s smartphones even better, I’m not surprised by these figures at all. What I am worried about, is this global economic situation. How is that going to impact operators investing in infrastructure that can handle the 500% increase in traffic? What about congested cities that even today suffer network overload? The next 5 years are going to be very interesting, but I bet man has been saying that since he discovered fire.