Mobile data to outstrip voice traffic by 2011

Stuart Corner
Monday, 27 July 2009 11:25

IT Industry - Strategy

Nokia Siemens Networks says the volume of data on mobile networks is doubling annually and will likely exceed voice (measured in bytes) by 2011. Meanwhile, other research suggests voice traffic is declining at the expense of email, texting and instant messaging.

According to Nokia Siemens: "The growing popularity of mobile broadband services and even machine-to-machine applications will create an exponential rise in the number of bytes of data traffic carried by mobile packet core networks worldwide. This will result in a yearly doubling of data traffic from almost 400 petabytes (400 million gigabytes) a year in 2009 to almost 2,000 petabytes (2 billion gigabytes) a year by 2011, bypassing the estimated volume of voice traffic (1,200 petabytes)."

The company further claims that there are about 500 million users of packet data services on networks built using its equipment, representing about 40 percent of the global, cellular data traffic. Said Jürgen Walter, head of Converged Core, Nokia Siemens Networks: "While we can see that data traffic is rocketing, operator revenues are not. This means focusing on lowering the cost of data delivery. We have pioneered Direct Tunnel technology to provide an intelligent connectivity short cut for massive volumes of data that will deliver significant value to our customers."

Telstra has already activated Ericsson direct tunnel technology on its network. The technology routes data traffic around network components that are essential for signalling and for carrying voice traffic and which normally handle data traffic as well but which, in a network with a heavy data load, can impose a bottleneck requiring additional investment to alleviate. So this technology also enables the Next G network to carry more data traffic at lower costs.

Nokia Siemens comments follow those from the Global GSM Assocation last week forecasting that HSPA (3G wireless broadband) connections (ie dongles and laptop embedded modems) will pass the 150 million mark by the end of September and 200 million by the end of Q1 2010.

But it seems that it is not only the rapid uptake of mobile broadband that is responsible for it overtaking voice traffic volumes. People seem to be talking less and instead favouring other means of communication such as email, SMS and instant messaging.  Nokia Siemens predictions follow research from UK telecoms service price comparison website, uSwitch.com of which it says "Conversation could be a dying art form as people rapidly replace picking up the phone with emails, texts, social networking and tweets."

uSwitch says its research suggests 58 percent of Brits make less than one mobile phone call a day, 44 percent less than one call a day on their home landline and 23 percent make only 6 to 10 calls a week. Neither are they making all their calls from work: 66 percent claim not to do so.

uSwitch.com says its research shows that almost three quarters of households (71 percent) spend more than 10 hours a week online, "And it's here that many are now chatting instead. Over half (55 percent) spend up to two hours a week emailing, while a quarter (25 percent) spend between three and five hours on email...Over half (55 percent) spend time chatting and networking on forums, MSN Messenger or sites like Facebook."