As we move towards ever more mobile internet connected devices such as smart phones and tablet PC’s, we of course will be consuming ever more internet bandwidth delivered over the ether. Cisco Networks, the maker of much of the hardware that routes the internet, has forecasted a 26-fold increase in mobile traffic from 2010 to 2015 to a whopping 6.3 exabytes of data. Those of you who didn’t read our post on overall internet traffic a few weeks ago, will be asking the obvious question….”what the h&#ll is an exabyte?
Here is a little data to show how much data that really is:
1000 GB = 1 Terabyte (TB)
1000 TB = 1 Petabyte (PB)
1000 PB = 1 Exabyte (EB)
1000 EB = 1 Zettabyte (ZB)
This data explosion doesn’t come cheap. To provide this amount of data, your cell phone providers are working on ever faster and more powerful networks to handle the data. It seems to come from my ever increasing cell phone bill (but that’s another story). On average, each mobile connection generates 65 megabytes of traffic every month, equal to about 15 songs or so of data. By 2015, it is predicted each of us will consume 17 times that, or the equivalent of 260 songs. So, back to Cisco’s data prediction of 6.3 exabytes of data by 2015…. that translates to the equivalent of 19 billion DVD’s or 75 times the global internet traffic of the year 2000!!!
