The Growth of Mobile Networks
The Growth of Mobile Networks Drives the Growth of Mobile Data Usage
As wireless services and bandwidth have grown over each generation of mobile networks, so has the number of mobile subscribers. In 1985, NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephone) had grown to be the largest mobile network with 110,000 subscribers. In striking contrast, today’s largest mobile network, China Mobile, has 937,169,000 subscribers as of February 2021.
According to Statista, mobile traffic constitutes about half of all web traffic worldwide, and has since the beginning of 2017. In 2020, over 90% of unique global internet users worldwide, 4.28 billion people, accessed the web through mobile devices. As mobile technologies become more affordable and accessible, an increase in both mobile devices and internet usage is sure to follow.
The introduction of 5G networks has only increased the bandwidth available for mobile connections. With the rapid proliferation of 5G services, the number of mobile subscribers is continually rising. It’s expected that the uptake of 5G connections will be faster than any previous cellular generation and that there will be more than half a billion 5G subscribers by the end of the year. By 2025, analysts expect 2.7 billion 5G connections.
What do these statistics mean for mobile data usage?
According to Ericsson, global monthly mobile data usage will equal 226 exabytes (EB) per month. What’s an exabyte, you say? An exabyte is 1,000 petabytes (PB). What’s a petabyte, you say? A petabyte is 1 million gigabytes (GB). In short, by 2026 global monthly mobile data usage is expected to hit 226 billion GBs per month.
On a more comprehensible scale, in the U.S., by 2026, mobile data usage is projected to hit 49 GB per month per user. That’s $392 per person, per month, in today’s U.S. prices. Will your company be able to afford unfettered access to mobile networks on its devices?
Unfortunately, it’s hard to even imagine a world without wireless connectivity now. Its influence is only growing as more businesses of all sizes rely on mobile networks to greater degrees.
As the backbone for businesses today, connectivity has never been more important. Neither has the need to take control of and secure your network. CyberReef’s MobileWall:
- Protects your mobile data from bad actors
- Gives you valuable insights into how that mobile data is being used by your business and its employees
- Helps you control your corporate mobile data usage in remote, mobile environments. Learn more about our MobileWall mobile firewall