In its latest report titled “Mobile Data Offload & Onload: WiFi & Small Cell Strategies,” Juniper talks about the growing mobile data use. According to the research company, operators are to face significant additional pressure over the next five years. Not only will smartphone and tablet users drive the growth in mobile data use, but also folks with netbooks, laptops, game consoles and eReaders. These “other” devices are estimated to account for as much as 24% of all mobile data traffic generated by 2016. When put into numbers, that’s annual data traffic onloaded of more than 7,500 PB (Petabytes) by 2016, equating to a voluminous 3 trillion music track downloads.
The reason why more and more laptop owners will use 3G and 4G network is obvious – they are getting faster and thus more dependant. Moreover, in the emerging markets of the world there is no widely available fixed broadband infrastructure, prompting users to rely on mobile networks, instead.
In order to meet the growing demand, operators will have to use offloading technologies such as WiFi and small cells to augment 4G networks. In fact, Juniper predicts that mobile data traffic offloaded from the operator networks will reach just over 59% in 2016, with North America and Western Europe together accounting for over 76% of the offloaded data…
As usual, additional information about the report is available from Juniper’s website.