The latest report released by Swedish Telecom Equipment giant, Ericsson says that during Dec-2009, Mobile data traffic surpassed Voice traffic for the first time. Quoted as ‘Historic Milestone for mobile Industry’ by Ericsson Press, the report is based on the measurements from Ericsson’s live network around the world.
According to Ericsson, this historic crossover occurred, when both data & voice carried traffic was 140, 000 terabytes per month. It also adds that mobile data traffic grew by 280{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} in last two years and expected to go double annually over next five years. Ericsson’s measurement also shows that worldwide 3G network traffic has surpassed 2G network during the same period. This is despite the fact that India, the second largest mobile market by subscriber count has yet to auctions its 3G & BWA spectrum.
Ericsson’s report pointed out that the growth in data traffic is due to availability of Smartphones and growing popularity of Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter etc. This clearly implies that 400 million mobile broadband connections are generating more data traffic than 4.6 billion mobile user’s voice traffic. Report also adds that over 200 mobile operators in 60 countries are now deploying and promoting Facebook mobile products, with over 100 million active users accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. But what about QoS concerns? The issue’s raised by another report released by Nokia Siemens Networks, the rival vendor of Ericsson. The NSN report, which is based on global survey of Internet users, says that broadband users are said to be up to 22 percent ‘less satisfied’ with their connectivity when compared to fixed broadband; reduced download speeds are deemed to be the biggest complaint. Is this a wake-up call for industry? As mobile data traffic growing at alarming speed, service providers need to address these QoS concerns before it’s too late.
