Living in the 4th Screen

Exploring the use of mobile technology in education and life

Cisco sees mobile tsunami on the horizon

According to this post on the Wall Street Journal online Cisco thinks wireless-data traffic will double every year through 2014. Part of this increase will be driven by the explosion of handheld wireless devices. Cisco thinks there could be more than 5 billion mobile handheld devices connected to wireless networks by the year 2014.

According to the Cisco report much of the growth will occur in India and the Middle East. They also report that in spite of the economic downturn the demand for mobile access has remained constant. This lines up with the financial reports from Apple that had them reporting record profits last year driven by their iPhone and iPod Touch.

The WSJ article states:

Mobile video content, which is expected to more than double, will account for almost two-thirds of the world’s wireless data traffic in 2014, making it the highest-growing application category within the report.

I have said it many times on this blog that schools need to prepare for the coming mobile tsunami that will soon be hitting their shores. Students already come to school with computers in their pockets that access the internet without ever touching the schools network. This type of behavior will only increase over the next few years. Schools need to incrementally prepare for this phenomenon.

Mobile Data Apocalypse?

Are we at the threshold of a data apocalypse? According to this post on The Mobile Opportunity blog we are at the precipice of a mobile data explosion. See the graph below.

According to the post there has been a shift in the thinking of mobile data usage:

... in the last year or so, the attitude has shifted dramatically from "no one is using mobile data" to "oh my God, there's so much demand for mobile data that it'll destroy the network." A lot of this attitude shift was caused by the iPhone, which has indeed overloaded some mobile networks. But there's also a general uptick in data usage from various sources, and the rate of growth seems to be accelerating.

The article goes on to quote some analysis from Cisco regarding data usage by smartphones:

Cisco estimates that a single smartphone produces as much data traffic as 40 traditional feature phones. So converting 10 million people from feature phones to smartphones is like adding 390 million new feature phone users, in terms of impact on the data network. The more popular smartphones get, the busier the network becomes.

I know my wife and I consume copious amounts of mobile data on our iPhones. Just 18 months ago our mobile data usage was zero. It has risen significantly since we purchased our iPhones. I have read recently about dire predictions regarding mobile usage and how demand will out pace supply. I have also read that mobile network providers can not keep up with demand. I think there is to much money to be made with mobile data and that the carriers will figure out a way to improve transmission or to throttle the heaviest users.