Cisco: Mobile data to grow 26 fold by 2015

Mobile data traffic

Mobile data traffic is set to rocket over the next four years, according to Cisco.

The network giant has released its visual networking index report, which claimed worldwide traffic from mobile devices would grow 26-fold from last year's figures to 2015 working out at an annual growth rate of 92 per cent.

This would amount to 6.3 exabytes of traffic per month or 75 exabytes each year.

Suraj Shetty, vice president of worldwide service provider marketing at Cisco, said: "Consumers and business users continue to demonstrate a healthy demand for mobile data services."

"The fact that global mobile data traffic increased 2.6-fold from 2009 to 2010, nearly tripling for the third year in a row, confirms the strength of the mobile internet."

The report also predicted there would be 5.6 billion personal devices connected to the worldwide mobile network by 2015.

Tablets were set for the biggest surge, with the report claiming mobile traffic usage would grow 205-fold by 2015. Cisco also claimed tablets would generate more traffic in that year around 248 petabytes per month than the whole of the global mobile network in 2010 237 petabytes a month.

Thankfully, the speed of the network was also predicted to grow. From 2009 to 2010 the average speed more than doubled to 215kbps, but Cisco believed this would increase 10-fold over the next four years to 2,200kbps.

"The seemingly endless bevy of new mobile devices, combined with greater mobile broadband access, more content and applications of all types especially video are the key catalysts driving this remarkable growth," concluded Shetty.

Jennifer Scott

Jennifer Scott is a former freelance journalist and currently political reporter for Sky News. She has a varied writing history, having started her career at Dennis Publishing, working in various roles across its business technology titles, including ITPro. Jennifer has specialised in a number of areas over the years and has produced a wealth of content for ITPro, focusing largely on data storage, networking, cloud computing, and telecommunications.

Most recently Jennifer has turned her skills to the political sphere and broadcast journalism, where she has worked for the BBC as a political reporter, before moving to Sky News.