Mobile Data to Reach 76M TB per Month Globally in 2021: iGR

February 3, 2017

Mobile consumers’ increasing use of mobile video and cloud applications will drive growth

February 2, 2017 — The amount of data flowing over the world’s mobile network is increasing exponentially. iGR estimates that in 2016, approximately eight million terabytes (TB) of mobile data traffic flowed over the world’s mobile data networks per month. And by 2021, the expected first year of commercial 5G network deployments, iGR forecasts mobile data traffic will increase to 76 million TB per month.

Many factors will contribute to the growing amount of mobile data worldwide, including reasonably priced data-centric smartphones and the trend toward consuming content stored in the cloud, especially video. Continued network rollouts, such as 3G expansion in developing markets and upgrades to LTE, LTE-Advanced and eventually 5G in developed markets, will also contribute to the total amount of data traffic.

iGR believes that the consumption of mobile data will grow aggressively over the forecast period in both developing markets and more mature markets. Commercial 5G networks based on the IMT-2020 standard are expected to be deployed in 2021 in several developed regions of the world, and this next step in the evolution of mobile networks will only increase the amount of data consumers use.

iGR’s new market study, Global Mobile Data Forecast, 2016 – 2021: Still Growing and No Signs of Slowing, forecasts the mobile data traffic from 2016 to 2021 at the global level, as well as for the following regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Japan. For each region, iGR forecasts the number of connections, the amount of data usage per type of connection per month, and the total amount of mobile data traffic per month.

The following key questions are addressed in the new research study:

What are the drivers of mobile data traffic?
What are some of the limiting factors on the amount of mobile data traffic?
What is mobile data usage today in all regions of the world and at what rate is mobile data usage expected to grow over the forecast period?
For each region, how much mobile data traffic is used by an average mobile connection?
For each region, how much mobile data traffic is used by each quartile?
What levels of mobile data usage of some of the major mobile operators in each region experiencing and what initiatives are they using to meet the demand?
The information in this market study will be valuable for:

Mobile operators
Device OEMs
Mobile infrastructure and equipment OEMs
Content providers and distributors
Financial analysts and investors
The new market study can be purchased and downloaded directly from iGR’s website. Alternatively, contact Iain Gillott at (512) 263-5682 or email for additional details on this study.