Due to consumers' infatuation with all types of video, both viewing and sharing, as well as the increasing number of mobile subscribers in the world, the amount of traffic generated by mobile video on worldwide networks is rapidly increasing and should account for over half of all mobile data traffic by 2018, according to iGR.
Many factors are driving the use of mobile video, including the rollout of LTE networks and the availability of mobile devices that easily support video. Services are key as well—more and more pay-TV operators are rolling out TV Everywhere and multiscreen strategies, and over-the-top (OTT) services have hopped the chasm into mainstream consumer behavior.
"iGR believes that mobile video traffic will increase over the forecast period due to consumers' fascination with video and their increasingly connected, mobile lifestyle," said Iain Gillott, president and founder of iGR, a market research consultancy focused on the wireless and mobile industry. "Even subscribers who only casually and infrequently use mobile data features today will watch increasing amounts of video content on their mobile devices by the end of the forecast period."
The finding echoes the trends seen in other recent research. For instance, global mobile phone subscriptions exceeded two billion in 2013 and are expected to reach eight billion subscriptions by 2019, according to the Ericsson Mobility Report. As a result, the Swedish infrastructure leader expects mobile data traffic to grow by 80 percent this year. Video last year accounted for 35 percent of mobile traffic, and Ericsson expects that number to grow to 50 percent by 2019—not as bullish as iGR but still portending exponential growth.
It’s not surprising: Video streams eat up big chunks of data – 6 MB per minute with a 4G connection; according to Ericsson, a single HD movie could consume up to 700 MB of data.
According to Sandvine’s Global Internet Phenomena Report, Netflix is the leading downstream application, taking up one third of U.S. bandwidth traffic, while YouTube accounts for 18.6 percent. Globally, YouTube is a leading source of Internet traffic. More and more of that is transitioning to mobile networks as the connections to support an adequate quality of experience become pervasive.
And, the United States is ground zero as a mobile industry leader: CTIA said that American consumers comprise half of the world’s 4G/LTE connections. In fact, U.S. wireless consumers use five times more voice and almost twice as much data with 75 percent faster data speeds than our European counterparts.
Strategy Analytics said that as a result of all of this, the focus of 4G competition is moving from coverage to higher data speeds and increased capacity—and that we will see increased investment as a result in evolving 4G technologies.
Leading operators are now not only exploiting new frequency bands to deploy additional LTE carrier channels but also re-farming existing spectrum. They are also exploring new spectrum to support future traffic growth. The 3.5GHz band looks to be a good candidate in near term, for instance where LTE TDD can provide either fixed or mobile broadband access.
“Sprint’s Spark program is the latest proof that LTE TDD offers an efficient solution for mobile operators to increase their broadband capacity using higher-frequency bands, while re-farming lower frequencies with LTE FDD to provide good coverage and spectral efficiency,” noted Guang Yang, senior analyst for Strategy Analytics’ wireless networks and platforms practice. “Hybrid LTE FDD and TDD networks deployed in multiple frequency bands can help operators rapidly achieve a good balance between network coverage and capacity. For operators with more limited access to paired spectrum, TDD provides a good option to deploy 4G LTE while still leveraging common LTE networking equipment and devices, as long as deployment bands are globally or at least regionally harmonized.”
Edited by
Rory J. Thompson 
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