Mobile Data Plans Will Grow 10 Times Bigger by 2015

Real-time entertainment applications on mobile devices (smartphone and tablets) being used on fixed access networks accounted for nine percent of all traffic in North America, according to Sandvine. 

By 2015, Sandvine believes mobile devices will account for 20 percent of all traffic on North American fixed access networks. 

In the past three years on North American fixed access networks, real-time entertainment has almost doubled its share of traffic, now accounting for 58.6 percent of all peak period traffic, Sandvine says. 

Sandvine expects real-time entertainment will account for over two thirds of peak period traffic by 2015.

For those reasons, Sandvine predicts mobile users will demand service packages with ten times the monthly quota that is available in 2012. The clear business problem for mobile ISPs is that virtually nobody believes service providers can charge an order of magnitude more for mobile broadband.