Cisco: Wireless data use will double every year

George - I came across this from another blog and found it interesting... I agree, wireless data is expanding leap and bounds.

The worldwide demand for wireless data capacity is enormous and growing at an incredible rate. Between 2008 and 2013, Cisco says wireless data traffic will double every year, reaching more than 2 exabytes per month by 2013.

Mobile data traffic will grow from its current 1 petabyte per month to 1 exabyte per month in half the time it took fixed data traffic to do so, Cisco reported. The internet grew from 1 petabyte per month to 1 exabyte per month in 14 years.

Keeping up with this data traffic is enormously expensive for the network carriers like AT&T, Verizon Wirless and Sprint, which have invested billions of dollars upgrading their systems to 3G standards. The next leap to 4G will be even more expensive.

The reason for this huge surge in demand for data is super fast connections on smartphones like BlackBerry and iPhone, which have turned the consumer cell phone market into a competition for which carrier and device can offer more features.

A BlackBerry generates more data traffic per user than 30 feature cell phones, Cisco said. Imagine if 4 billion mobile phone users all had data demand as high as that and you can see why telecom expense management is a challenging proposition.

http://www.visagemobile.com/blog/2009/09/18/cisco-wireless-data-use-will-double-every-year/