4G to Account for Over Half of Mobile Data Traffic by 2018
With all the large mobile carriers busy deploying their 4G networks , it’s only a matter of time before 4G traffic becomes the majority. The latest forecast from Cisco predicts that global 4G mobile data traffic will reach 8 exabytes per month, or 51% of total mobile data traffic, in 2018. For comparison, mobile data traffic over 4G in 2013 was reported at 448 petabytes per month, or about 30% of the global total.
Currently, less than 3% of all connections are 4G. That figure will increase to 15% by 2018. The next few years are expected to see an 18-fold increase in 4G traffic according to Cisco’s forecast, which puts the growth rate ahead of overall mobile traffic, which is expected to grow 11-fold to 190 exabytes.
“The projected increase in mobile traffic is partly due to continued strong growth in the number of mobile Internet connections, such as personal devices and machine-to-machine (M2M) connections, which will exceed 10 billion by 2018 and be 1.4 times greater than the world’s population,” Cisco said in a statement.
In terms of users, the company estimates that mobile will see 4.9 billion users by 2018, compared to 4.1 billion in 2013. As stated, connections are predicted to reach 10 billion, made up of 8 billion mobile devices and 2 billion M2M connections. Mobile operators are also expected to use Wi-Fi networks for more traffic, with 52% of mobile traffic being on Wi-Fi or small cells networks by 2018.
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