What Long Run Mobile Broadband Growth Rate?

In 2012, global bandwidth growth slowed to about 40 percent, from about 70 percent annual growth in 2008. But keep that in perspective. Growth rates always slow when any organism, business or trend reaches an adult stage, garners a much larger installed base or achieves high penetration. In other words, there is a “law of large numbers” at work.

And that seems the case for Internet bandwidth growth as well. While the pace of growth is slowing, international Internet bandwidth continues to grow rapidly, more than doubling between 2010 and 2012, to 77 Tbps, according to TeleGeography.

Average international Internet traffic grew 35 percent in 2012, down from 39 percent in 2011, and peak traffic grew 33 percent, well below the 57 percent increase recorded in 2011, TeleGeography says.

International Internet traffic and capacity growth rates are declining due to slowing broadband subscriber growth in mature markets, and the expansion of content delivery networks (CDNs) and local caching technologies, which reduce the need for new long-haul capacity by storing popular content closer to the end-users.

Some think the same sort of trend ultimately will characterize mobile broadband bandwidth growth rates as well, In fact, there is little reason to doubt that future trend, given historical precedents.

In March 2011, for example, AT&T projected that data bandwidth growth would be on the order of eight to 10 times over then-current levels between the end of 2010 and the end of 2015.

That forecast appears to be based on an expectation that volumes would roughly double in 2011 and then increase by a further 65 percent in 2012.

Instead, AT&T seems to be seeing something like 40 percent annual growth. To be sure, 40 percent annual growth is significant. It means bandwidth consumption doubles about every two to three years.

Cisco estimates mobile broadband grew about 70 percent in 2012, and will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 66 percent from 2012 to 2017.

Some believe Wi-Fi offload will slow the rate of mobile broadband growth. On the other hand, even such offloading, at high rates of perhaps 80 percent, would slow the rate of growth by about 50 percent.