New figures have been released forecasting that 418 million people worldwide will use
mobile broadband services in 2017. The forecast has been made by Coda Research Consultancy, who expect that the
mobile internet market will have a revenue of $48 billion in the same year.
The greatest level of growth will be in the Asia Pacific region, which will account for 162 million users by 2017. 58 million North American
laptop and
netbook PC users will use mobile
broadband services in 2017 according to the projection, while
Europe will provide a further 94 million customers.
The report also warns of a huge surge in
broadband usage as a result of the increase in user numbers. Monthly traffic is expected to rise to 1.8 exabytes in 2017, a forty fold increase on the present traffic level.
More than fifty per cent of traffic is expected to be in video format, with a fifth of this to come from peer 2 peer websites. Half of this traffic will originate from the Asia Pacific, with analysts warning that the growth in
mobile broadband may not necessarily result in an increase in operator revenue growth.