4G, Video, Driving Massive Increases in Mobile Bandwidth Consumption

Without question, 4G changes data consumption patterns dramatically, and largely because consumption then switches from voice, messaging or even internet surfing and apps to consumption of video. Looking only at the type of device, smartphone data consumption is an order of magnitude higher than feature phones. That behavior pattern, in turn, is enabled by the ability to use 4G instead of 3G networks.

But every possible trend is at work in markets such as India, in the midst of a 4G network construction boom, with more users, more smartphones, faster network speeds and "free mobile data usage" plans and lower prices all working to boost mobile video viewing.

That nearly always are the reasons mobile data growth is so robust, and India will be no exception.

source: Cisco

source: Cisco

In India, mobile data traffic will grow 12-fold from 2015 to 2020, a compound annual growth rate of 63 percent, according to Cisco. Mobile traffic per mobile-connected end-user device will reach 1,352 megabytes per month by 2020, up from 149 megabytes per month in 2015, a CAGR of 55 percent.

Even if mobile eventually becomes the biggest source of gigabit connections globally, fixed networks will be upgraded to match, simply because widespread gigabit connectivity changes the consumer’s notion of what a “market offer” looks like. And if mobile connections historically have lagged fixed network capacity, that also means fixed networks will have to upgrade to multi-gigabit ranges to maintain relevance and value.

Also, installation of much more optical fiber to support small cells (4G and 5G) will help change the economics of deploying residential fiber connections, assuming fixed network multi-gigabit connections supplied by any type of ISP will involve some sort of “deep fiber” deployment, no matter what the actual drop cable media happen to be (coaxial cable, twisted pair cable, optical fiber or wireless of some sort).