Ericsson Predicts Video to Drive LTE, Smartphone Growth

A NEW mobility report has revealed that mobile-data traffic will continue to grow significantly in the coming years, a trend driven mainly by video. Overall data traffic is expected to grow 12-fold by the end of 2018.

The mobility report from Ericsson also indicated that increasing usage is driven by the continual growth in the amount of content available as well as the improved network speeds that come with HSPA and LTE development.

According to the Senior Vice President and Head of Strategy at Ericsson, Mr. Douglas Gilstrap, “LTE services will be available to about 60 percent of the world’s population in 2018. We expect LTE subscriptions to exceed 1 billion in 2017, driven by more capable devices and demand for data-intensive services such as video. Owing to the build out of WCDMA/HSPA, network speeds have improved, and so has the user experience.”

The report showed that video makes up the largest segment of data traffic in networks, and it is expected to grow around 60 percent annually up until the end of 2018 adding that video consumption is on average 2.6GB per subscription per month in some networks.

The study further said that while video is popular, users don’t necessarily tend to spend the most time on data-heavy applications saying that consumers spend more time on social networking: an average of up to 85 minutes per day in some networks.

On the current mobile-phone sales, the report said that smartphones accounted for around half of all in Q1 2013, compared with roughly 40 percent for the whole of 2012.

It also said that the number of total mobile subscriptions grew by 8 percent globally year-on-year by Q1 2013 noting that of those, WCDMA/HSPA added around 60 million subscriptions while GSM/EDGE-only subscriptions grew by roughly 30 million, and LTE 20 million new subscriptions.

Mobile-broadband subscriptions grew even faster over this period at a rate of 45 percent year-on-year, reaching around 1.7 billion.

The Mobility Report also addressed the concept of “app coverage”, which borders on the definition of coverage from voice to include how well users are able to access their mobile apps and present a new framework explaining the effects of varying network performance in a way that is relevant to the user.

The report in the current edition observed the relationship between network performance and consumer loyalty stating that network performance is the principal driver of subscriber loyalty to mobile operators, followed by value for money.

Other sections of the report explained the effects of smartphone signaling on data traffic, and look at data roaming, identifying opportunities for operators to generate new revenue streams.