As I previously mentioned, CTIA has released the latest edition of the CTIA Wireless Industry Indices report — an in-depth analysis of the semi-annual data survey conducted by CTIA since January 1985, updated through year-end 2010.
With more than 117 tables and 72 charts, the 390-page CTIA Wireless Industry Indices report provides a comprehensive review of the survey results over time, and a detailed series of benchmarks for industry performance and productivity.
In my last blog post, I explained how the wireless industry spent more than $71 billion in capital expenditures in 2008-2010. Today's focus is on the dramatic growth in wireless data traffic.
Over the past year, there’s been a lot of buzz about the growth in wireless data traffic, but it’s not just hype. As new devices and new applications have been introduced, wireless data usage has spiked.
CTIA’s Semi-Annual Survey doesn’t do projections. Instead, it measures reality. What we found is confirmation about the buzz.
Between year-end 2009 and year-end 2010, wireless data traffic in the U.S. more than doubled, growing from 107.8 billion MB in the last half of 2009 to more 226.5 billion MB in the last half of 2010.
To help you visualize how much that really is, think about it this way: The Library of Congress has more than 22 million books in its catalog. If each book is equal to one MB, then wireless service providers are delivering two times the Library of Congress’ book catalog for wireless consumers every hour of every day of the year.
The “hockey stick” of wireless growth isn’t in minutes of use anymore. It isn’t in wireless subscribers either. Minutes of use still amount to more than 2 trillion a year here in the U.S. So do text messages. Instead, the hockey stick is in the use of new applications. Wireless data traffic has surged to more than 388 billion MB a year.
And that’s just the beginning. Last year, the FCC pointed out that Cisco Systems, The Yankee Group and Coda Research projected (on average) that data traffic in 2014 would be 35 times the volume of traffic in 2009. Since then, Cisco’s Visual Networking Index (VNI) has projected that wireless data traffic in North America will grow 20 times from 2010 to 2015, on top of the already extraordinary growth we’ve experienced. Combining Cisco’s projections for the last two years, wireless data traffic in 2015 is expected to be 56 times the volume of traffic in 2009.
That’s why we need to plan for that future today, by thinking about the spectrum we’ll need to deliver these volumes tomorrow.
5 Responses to “Wireless Data Traffic Grew 110% from 2009-2010” Leave a reply ›
Thank goodness some acknowledgement is occuring of the sheer volume of data....recently.
I trust the industry is appropriately grateful to the commercial lobbyists for their success in obfuscating the fundamental issues and dazzling the global public with convenience and trinkets.
Good for the groups and companies that are working on quality, constitutional principles, value in the volume management, reliability, accountability, and fiduciary issues as well as convenience on line.
As a consumer, being well aware of the data-stream glut, it seems reasosnable for verifiable and accountable fiduciaries to assist consumers/customers/clients take of care of their business, paging through an inane series of "security" related data entries and finishing off with the dog and movie questions is just sad.
AT&T and other firms know us, we are the same just people, whose phone calls have always been full of the names of our favourites and what we care about.
I think I'll consider starting a data-care business, from what I can see, people are more interested in their shiny little machines than in each other, and a capable robot is a more reliable device than a fallable person, hmmm, who's making who?.......Are we machining or being machined........Better ask the person who is an expert in CAD software...
The shiny little machines are interested in us, and they seem to care more , what we watch, when we turn our lights on and off, soon EBMUD will track the flushing of toilets, laundry use, and bathing,
they actually seem to care, as long as we have electricity and charged batteries.........
Take care of the air-waves please.
Apparently, this might also streamline the on-line traffic, and conserve space for data that is more useful and productive to exchange. By the time I got to the favourite movie and first dog questions, I had had it. Grotesquely time consuming, for any one with a multi-task schedule.
I clicked off of AT&T's on-line account registry. I have no problem with a highly demanding privacy and security protocol with appropriate rigorous requirements regarding value and services relating to value, whether it's cash, time or safety.
I just cancelled an on-line registration process with AT&T due to the cumbersome and in my opinion insecure (masquerading as complex verifications).
In principle
Follow-up, I got so long winded, I failed to edit my post before I clicked send....guess that proves my point.
Any way, thanks for the succinct heads up on the volume doubling in '09 and '10.
Hopefully the quality and understanding of data streams and their value in assisting us to be genuinely human and technically adept simultaneously.
The long living (tens of thousands of years) indigenous cultures of the world were adept in these fields also, and had wireless communication technology rather finely tuned in a manner that appeared to allow nature/science/physics to be the arbiter of the scales of use employed by natural persons and their tools.
Let's hope these new tools serve a greater good and balance, lest our civilizations become so top heavy with machinery and convenience, that the costs of our errors or ommissions, prove to be a liability to great to sustain. Human heart and mind dream the work of hands and brains, and humble kindness and consideration have yet to prevail.
Peace..........the germs and electrons are in charge.
jk
Cheers.
jk