The volume of global mobile data surpassed that of voice data for the first time in December 2009 according to a report from Ericsson. Both reached volumes of approximately 140,000 terabytes with data coming out ahead. Ericsson found that mobile data traffic has grown 280 percent during each of the last two years and is expected to continue to double annually over the next five years.
“This is a significant milestone with some 400 million mobile broadband subscriptions now generating more data traffic than the voice traffic from the total 4.6 billion mobile subscriptions around the world,” said Hans Vestberg, Ericsson President and CEO, speaking at a management briefing in Las Vegas. “Our view that the appeal of anywhere, anytime connectivity would drive mobile broadband growth is confirmed by the real world measurements under taken by Ericsson.”
Much of the mobile data is made of traffic to social networking sites. Over 100 million active users now access Facebook through their mobile devices and over 200 mobile carriers in 60 countries now offer such functionality on their devices.
Ericsson also reported that 3G traffic surpassed 2G traffic over the same period.