Mobile and Portable Data Usage Growing

The next generation 4G networks - LTE-Advanced and WiMAX 2 - are well positioned to provide the bandwidth/throughput demanded by Mobile and Portable devices as well as fixed equipment (e.g. CPE and backhaul), as mentioned in my blog on Nov 8th.

The highest data traffic usage is video – streaming video, Flash, Internet TV and general video files – and together with other IP-based applications becoming available, will drive data traffic as they become more widely used. An article released Nov 15th – “Operator Says LTE Subscribers Using 15 GB Per Month!" (http://gigaom.com/2010/11/15/wireless-vs-wired-broadband/), conveys that operators are already seeing the present LTE networks growing data traffic demand.

At a recent LTE Forum, Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff provided data traffic information from Sweden's Teliasonera:
1) Smartphone user on their networks consumed 375 MBytes/month of data.
2) The average "broadband" user on their network is largely 3G data cards and consumes 5 GBytes/month.
3) The average LTE consumer, however, which are essentially all data card, used 14 GBytes to 15 GBytes/month of data.

Although this is a single carrier’s information, and Teliasonera was the first operator to deploy LTE, this increasing data traffic demand should alert as well as prompt carriers to move quickly to LTE-Advanced and WiMAX 2 networks since Mobile devices (e.g. Smartphones, and Tablets such as iPad) and Portable devices (e.g. laptops with data cards) with ever demanding applications are growing in popularity.

Obviously it’s a business case decision – ROI: present pre-4G rollout versus upgrading to 4G – but new consumer electronic (CE) products are making their way onto the market with LTE and WiMAX technologies built-in...the “wave is coming”.