U.S. mobile carrier traffic reach 724 TBytes per month in 2015, up from 15 TB per month in 2009, says Coda Research Consultancy, an overall compound annual growth rate of 90 percent. As you might expect, video is behind the sharp rise, growing 104 percent.
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In fact, by 2015, video is forecast to represent about two thirds of all traffic, or 459 TB a month, Coda Research says.
That could be a problem. Sprint and Clearwire, for example, argue their new WiMAX networks will provide three times to five times the bandwidth of 3G networks. That's all well and good, but this forecast suggests aggregate demand will grow 10 times from present levels.
Several issues: is there enough spectrum to handle all this growth? What is the cost of upgrading facilities, even if there is enough spectrum? Is there any video revenue model that pays for the investments? Will the mobile regulatory framework provide incentives or disincentives for investment?
Those are the big challenges. But the report has other nuggets for some parts of the mobile ecosystem.
Handsets will drive 68 percent of mobile carrier traffic by 2015, while netbooks will represent 14 percent.
Coda also estimates that mobile ad revenues will total $5.05 billion in 2015.
By 2015, mobile data revenue will grow to 47 percent of mobile service provider revenues, while voice generates 53 percent of revenue. This last prediction is important, as it suggests how and when mobile service providers will cope with the ultimate shift away from mobile voice business models.
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