Mobile Traffic Patterns Shifting Toward Landline Norms

There is a telling statistic in Cisco's latest Visual Networking Index, namely that as the mobile broadband users have rapidly grown, the usage pattern rapidly has assumed the familiar pattern seen in the fixed-line part of the business.

Consider heavy usage patterns. The top one percent of mobile data subscribers generate over 20 percent of mobile data traffic, down from 30 percent just a year ago. That 29-point swing in just 12 months suggests that as more "typical" users adopt mobile broadband, they bring behaviors much different from those of early mobile broadband adopters, namely less-intensive consumption.

Cisco also reports that mobile data traffic over the last year also now matches the 1:20 ratio that has been true of fixed networks for several years (one percent of users generate or consume 20 percent of total transferred bytes).

Similarly, the top 10 percent of mobile data subscribers now generate approximately 60 percent of mobile data traffic, down from 70 percent at the beginning of the year.

All of those instances of "reversion toward the mean" are driven by the broader adoption by "typical" users of smartphone service. That noted, average smartphone usage doubled in 2010. The average amount of traffic per smartphone in 2010 was 79 Mbytes per month, up from 35 Mbytes per month in 2009.

Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2010–2015