Ericsson recently released its Traffic and Market Report. The results regarding mobile traffic are pretty much consistent with the Cisco predictions. Traffic currently doubles every year (corresponding to a 30-increase over 5 years). The report also analyses the diverse use of mobile data over time of day, different countries and user types.
In the report two important conclusions are drawn (on which its ease to agree)
- The use of smart phones becomes intertwined with our day to day lives creating not only more and more traffic, but also creates traffic demand in previously not-so-well-covered geographical areas.
- The traffic to server-based applications that are independent of platform (Facebook, Twitter, various Google services etc) increases rapidly – in effect “Mobile Cloud Computing” is already here.
Maybe more questionable is the quote in the report of the socioeconomic impact report from 2010 where Ericsson and Arthur D. Little concluded that “for every 10 percentage point increase in broadband penetration, GDP increases by 1 percent . The study also revealed that around 80 new jobs are created for every 1,000 new broadband connections provided.” Personally, I am somewhat skeptic when social-science studies claim a causal relation, when in fact we see statistical correlation. In may, in fact well be the other way around – the new businesses emerging require (and invest in) better broadband penetration.
