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Cellular Data Traffic to Soar as Mobile & M2M Devices Generate the Equivalent of 14 Billion Hours of 4K Streaming by 2018BASINGSTOKE, England, December 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- A new study from Juniper Research has forecast that annual cellular data traffic, generated by smartphones, tablets, connected cars, and other M2M modules, will reach 129,000 PB (Petabytes) by 2018, equivalent to approximately 14 billion hours of 4K video streaming. The new research, Mobile Data Offload & Onload: Wi-Fi, Small Cell & Network Strategies 2016-2021, found that as 4K content becomes both more widely available and adopted by consumers, the average data usage will increase leading to almost threefold rise in cellular traffic to exceed 318,000PB by 2021. This will put pressure on network providers who will see greater usage; indeed Sprint recently collaborated with Ericsson to trial 4K content delivery over 5G networks. Mobile Data Traffic Highlights: 2017-2021
The Demand for Wi-Fi Offload Continues The use of Wi-Fi by operators for data offload has boosted the build-out of Wi-Fi hotspots in recent years. Juniper predicts that this will lead to over 60% of global mobile data traffic being offloaded via Wi-Fi networks in 2017. However, the research warned that a high QoE (quality of experience) while offloading data users will be essential for future network monetisation strategies. Report author Nitin Bhas added: "Operators need to support a user-experience comparable to that of cellular. Whilst progress has been made in, for example, refining handoffs between cellular and Wi-Fi, there is still room for improvement by implementing better network management and planning tools". The 'Wi-Fi Calling Operators 2017' whitepaper is available to download from the Juniper website together with further details of the research. Juniper Research provides research and analytical services to the global hi-tech communications sector, providing consultancy, analyst reports and industry commentary. For further details please contact Sam Smith, Press Relations |