Mobile data surpasses voice traffic

bealtine

http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-brief/49044-mobile-data-surpasses-voice-traffic?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tgdaily_all_sections+%28TG+Daily+-+All+News%29



It's true: people are using their phones less and less to actually make calls. A new report from Ericsson says that data usage has eclipsed voice traffic.

According to industry-wide numbers that Ericsson tracked, over the last 2 years the amount of data traffic throughout the world has expanded by 280%.

During a media event at the CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas, Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg said that voice traffic accounts for about 140,000 terabytes of data sent through the wireless networks every month. For the first time, though, data transmissions are ahead of that, though Vestberg did not say by how much.

On one day alone, the 2010 Chinese New Year, more than 23 billion texts were sent...in just one day. That's just one example of how people are now holding their phones out in front of them instead of up to their ears.

"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 Vestberg.

It's a tricky area for the mobile industry, because margins of voice traffic are much higher than they are on data traffic. If it gets to the point where data really swallows voice usage, consumers may start seeing new pricing structures for data.

Some mobile operators are even suggesting that the days of unlimited data are over, especially when the 4G and LTE networks are fully deployed.

watty

Actually the analysis is wrong.

Voice usage is still rising, but data usage is rising faster as data subscribers and smart phones added, as non-voice calls usage is up to 200 times more data per second transfered than voice.

The on-air interface is optimised for GSM, CDMA, UMTS voice codec. These use about 5kbps to 12kbps both ways, while you talk.

Streaming YouTube is upto 2,000 kbps while you watch.

Data "calls" also tend to be longer than voice calls.

Your 50mins of voice is 36Mb each way, = 120Mbyte traffic (much of which may be within the Mobile Providers Network if your friends on same network) and 10Gbyte down + 2GByte up per month may be the same Retail price.

But almost all the data traffic is outside the Mobile Network. It costs the Mobile operator much more. The above example the data usage is 100x the voice usage in Traffic and it's on average twice as expensive traffic!

Never mind unlimited Mobile data (which doesn't really exist anywhere and not at all in Ireland). As usage increases and data using customer base rises the prices will be raised and caps cut.

Of course I point this out several years ago here.

The more popular Mobile is, the less able it can compete on price and performance even with cheapest Fixed Broadband. It can only be fast and cheap if subsidised by voice and almost no-one is using your mast.

clohamon

Ericcson produced a paper last year, reassuringly called " Don't worry - Mobile broadband is profitable"

Ericsson, after more than two years of research in close cooperation with 18 operators, has come to a clear conclusion: Mobile broadband business cases show high profit margins, even if the operator is only a pure bit-pipe provider catering to the needs of subscribers using computers.

There's numbers, and a lot of assumptions.

watty

However the Operators seem unwilling to accept that the ONLY services of worth to customers are a bit-pipe for data, and doing SMS and voice calls. The SMS costs them nothing and should be cheaper. The voice calls should also be much cheaper.

Patrickof

And also, when passing calls over to another network the operator is billed on a per call or per second rate (although admittedly, rolled up in bulk and they generally only pay the difference between calls out - calls in from each other operator)

Passing data out over an internet uplink or into one of the internet exchanges is flat rate, so the operator is paying the same rate whether or not the customers are using the service.

watty

Data is charged per mbyte usage, not time. total traffic. Both ways.

Voice call charges for outgoing calls might be largely balanced by charges made by the operator for incomming calls.

Thus ALL data costs the operator, both directions per Mbyte.

A high percent voice traffic is either on same network (no 3rd party charges) or outgoing charges are met by incoming Termination charges.

SMS costs nothing essentially as it is sent in the system house keeping overhead when space is availabel (which is why it can take a day) and is absolutely tiny, 1120 bits per message. 1 minute of voice is approximately 1000x as much. 1 minute of YouTube can be 100,000x as much as an SMS or 100x a voice call.

Only Capped and Contended home user Internet is a flat rate. Uncapped, uncontended, SLA contracted volume data is charged per Mbyte usage, m'hearties!

bealtine

http://hothardware.com/News/Mobile-Data-Surpasses-Voice-Traffic-For-First-Time/

Total mobile data traffic topped mobile voice traffic in the United States last year, for the first time.

In fact, globally, data traffic (that includes SMS text messaging) topped voice traffic on a monthly basis last year and the total traffic across the world exceeded an exabyte for the first time in 2009, according to a report just released by Chetan Sharma Consulting, a leading strategist in the mobile industry (clients include AT&T and China Mobile).
What's an exabyte? One quintillion bytes, or one billion gigabytes. Yes, billion with a "b." And Sharma says North America and Western Europe's mobile data markets are growing so rapidly they each should exceed an exabyte in 2010.

Overall telecom revenues stayed flat, according to the report, mainly due to the worldwide recession. But they did not decline - unlike most other industries.

Interestingly, the nations with the largest data usage overall and the nations with the largest data service revenues were almost identical, just arranged in a different order. The top 10 by overall revenues were: U.S., China, Japan, France, Italy, UK, Germany, Brazil, Spain and India. By data revenues alone, they were: U.S. Japan, China, U.K., Italy, Germany, France, Australia, Spain and Korea. Though India fell off the list when it came to data revenues, it's one of the two top countries - the other being China - growing fastest in new mobile subscribers. The top 10 nations in terms of the number of mobile subscriptions looks still different yet: China, India, U.S., Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Germany, Pakistan and Italy.
The only mobile companies worldwide that are bringing in $50 million or more in revenues are China Mobile, Vodafone, AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless. But many more companies have 100 million-plus subscribers. In fact, the top nine companies in terms of subscribers looks a bit different than the revenue list: China Mobile, Vodafone, Telefonica, America Movil, Telenor, T-Mobile, China Unicom, TeliaSonera and Orange.

Sharma said he expected 2010 to be the first year that mobile broadband connections would exceed fixed broadband connections globally.
And internationally, the total number of app downloads hit $7 billion; bringing in $4.1 billion in revenues. Asia had the largest percentage of downloads, but North Americans accounted for more than 50 percent of the app revenue.

While text messaging still accounts for the majority of data traffic, its supremacy is being chipped away at by music, television and video streaming, voice navigation, games, web surfing and other things. And Apple, RIM and Google are duking it out internationally when it comes to market share of phones, though Nokia still has the largest percentage - which is shrinking.

When it comes to providers, the market is contracting, too. There were many aquisitions and mergers between telecom companies last year and that trend is expected to accelerate, Sharma said.

He also warned that though everyone's talking about 4G networks, it is still unclear exactly what that means and when implementation may begin. So don't hold your breath just yet.

watty

Text messaging is irrelevent to capacity, but VERY relevent to Profit and Revenue. Users replacing SMS with email or IP based IM hurts revenue badly as SMS is charged x1000 more and costs them almost nothing.