40 Percent of Mobile Data Will be Offloaded by 2017

In 2017, only 40 percent of the 90,000 Petabytes of data generated by smartphones, feature phones and tablets will reach the cellular network by 2017, as majority of the data traffic will be via the Wi-Fi network, according to a study by Juniper Research.

That forecast shows the hazards of making future bandwidth projections without considering big changes in behavior, not only by end-users but by ISPs themselves. In fact, one might note that Cisco has been lowering its estimates of bandwidth growth rates recently.

It is possible that a combination of changes ranging from consumer behavior to widespread use of mobile data offload account for the altered expectations. Consider that users are shifting from use of PCs to use of tablets.

One implication is that since tablet users presently consume less data than PC users, overall data consumption is dropping for those users who have largely displaced PC activity with tablet use. Also, mobile service providers are actively encouraging the use of Wi-Fi networks rather than the mobile network, when possible.

The report illustrates the importance of offload methods such as Wi-Fi and in-door consumer femtocells. Notebooks and e-readers will onload over 20 percent of their data traffic to the mobile networks in 2013, the study forecasts.

North America and Western Europe will have the highest offload factor throughout the forecast period.  

“The trend will continue and operators will make use of more integrated units of Wi-Fi and small cells,” says Juniper Research Analyst Nitin Bhas.

But that is only one of several tactics mobile service providers will employ to deal with the growth of demand including scaling, optimizing and offloading.

Scaling involves building out more towers and base stations or upgrading the network using next generation networks. In short, mobile service providers will substitute new long term evolution (LTE) networks for 3G networks.

Second, mobile service providers will use optimization techniques to enhance flow control, using packet inspection and correlation, by isolating the heavy data users from most other users.

Offloading is one of these key techniques as well. But the point to be highlighted here is that forecasts of future data demand can be affected in important ways by changes of behavior on the part of end-users and ISPs.