Mobile data gluttons feast on content

Beverley Head
Thursday, 23 February 2012 13:40

IT Industry - Development

If you think you're a mobile data glutton today, just wait until 2016. Networking giant Cisco believes that by 2016 the average user will consume 2.4 Gb of data per month via mobile devices.

While the carriers might on one level be rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of additional revenues, they are also increasingly challenged to grow their infrastructure to cope with the surging demand. In the last year alone Cisco claims that demand for mobile data has more than doubled from 51 Mb a month to 141 Mb a month.

According to Kevin Bloch, the chief technology officer of Cisco ANZ, offloading - where carriers are seamlessly able to switch users between mobile broadband networks and WiFi networks - will become increasingly important in terms of delivering the service levels consumers expect at a price they can accept. Mr Bloch said that Cisco planned to release tools toward the end of the year leveraging EAP-SIM authentication which effectively allows inter-network roaming.

Cisco's Global Mobile Data Traffic forecast for 2011-2016 which was the subject of a Cisco blog earlier this month points to headline annual mobile data growth rates of 78 per cent internationally and 68 percent in Australia. Mr Bloch said that the somewhat more conservative local growth was due to the relative maturity of the Australian mobile market.

Much of the demand for mobile data is coming from an explosion in video traffic, and soaring demand for cloud based information services, especially cloud based storage and collaboration platforms. That is being compounded by the increasingly diverse range of mobile devices from smartphones, to tablets, to laptops which are tailored for accessing data on the move.

'This year there will be as many mobile devices as people on the planet,' said Mr Bloch.