Facebook is more popular than talking
TELECOMS INFRASTRUCTURE VENDOR Ericsson reported
that for the first time mobile data traffic has overtaken voice.
The data, which was collected during December 2009, showed that data
traffic has ballooned by 280 per cent within the past two years. The
tipping point for data traffic was 140,000 Terabytes or, if you prefer
the marketeers, conversion, 140 Petabytes per month.
Although that figure sounds vast, doing some back of the envelope
calculations it works out to around 8 bits per second, not exactly
broadband speeds. We got that figure by using last year's UN mobile
subscription figures, which put the number at 4.1 billion mobile
subscribers and coupled that to a nominal 30-day month.
If you consider that if everyone is connected to GSM networks, and of
course they are not, that would equate to just over 1 minute of talk
per user per day. Of course mass data consumption occurs over 3G
networks where, even taking into account the operators' dismal
performance, users typically get far higher than 8bps throughput.
Ericsson claims that mobile data usage will double year-on-year for
the next five years. Again this is hardly surprising given the
proliferation of smartphones and content delivery systems. The phone
firm cites social notworking as a major driver for mobile data, saying
that 200 mobile operators in 60 countries are deploying Facebook mobile
products with over 25 per cent of all Facebook users logging in while on
the move.
The telecom firm might have a floundering mobile handset partnership
with Sony but it is still one of the major players when it comes to
network infrastructure and it used the figures to push the message that
networks that were originally built to carry voice will have to be
re-engineered to handle a lot more data besides just mindless chatter.
Mobile operators have done their level best to keep data usage down
by imposing restrictive usage quotas, however it seems that users'
appetites for consuming data while on the go continue to grow.