>> Broadband: By the end of 2010, mobile broadband subscribers worldwide will number 450 million, which will represent a 45 per cent share of the global broadband market. In 2011, though, the mobile broadband market will overtake the fixed segment, growing to near 670 million subscribers and a 51.8 per cent market share. Despite a healthy CAGR of 12 per cent between 2008 and 2013, Informa says, the fixed market’s share of global broadband subscribers will drop by half over the forecast period from 70 per cent to 35 per cent.

>> Broadband: today, the average mobile broadband connection generates 1.3 gigabytes of traffic per month — while consumers using mobile broadband via a data card pay around $60 a month for a 5 GB-chunk of access. By 2014, the average mobile broadband connection will generate 7 GB of traffic per month

>> Devices: Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF) forecasts 7 trillion wireless devices serving 7 billion people by 2017 which translates into 1000 radios per person.

>> Smartphones: load because of traffic and even more so -signalling (for every bit it sends, the smartphone is pumping out eight times more signalling traffic).

>> Smartphones: Today, smartphones are only 10 percent of all handsets in use, but generate over 50 percent of global mobile data handset traffic.

> Content categories: Cisco estimates that mobile video will comprise 66 percent of wireless data traffic by 2014 (Watching an hour of YouTube clips is equivalent to sending a million text messages, )

>> Consequences: Carriers expect to see a 10,000 percent increase in per-capita data usage over a five-year period.

>> Consequences: Global mobile data traffic has increased by 160 percent over the past year to 90 petabytes per month — the equivalent of 23 million DVDs.

>> Consequences: Global mobile data traffic today is growing today 2.4 times faster than global fixed broadband data traffic.

>> Consequences: Smartphones and laptop air cards will drive more than 90 percent of global mobile traffic by 2014.

>> Consequences: Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao expressed his concerns that the rapidly surging growth of smartphones could soon lead to the outstripping of network operators' capacity and their ability to ensure the smooth flow of data across their networks.

>> Margins: The profitability gap is compounded by traffic growth predictions, with data already outstripping voice by a factor of 2.5 to 1 and growing exponentially, whereas voice growth in

developed markets has reached a plateau as market penetration has become saturated.

>> Margins: It’s not so much a spectral efficiency issue. it’s more about the cost per megabyte increasing. The cost to deliver a megabyte to somebody is no longer defined just by how many megabytes you’re sending. It’s no longer a common number, it’s now influenced by the mix of your traffic.

>> No single method of addressing capacity issues provides a complete solution

>> It is inevitable to look at ways to better use the capacity available. However, the options for managing and shaping traffic are not straightforward and it is necessary to realise that “efficient” is not the same as “cheap” - efficiency is also about service improvements.

>> O2 UK, which until recently had exclusive rights to sell the iPhone, said that data traffic was 18 times higher this year than last, and has just invested another £500 million to ensure their 3G network can cope with the increasing demand.At the end of 2009, O2 UK promised to build out 1,500 new network sites in 2010, with 200 planned for London, where the iPhone (along with critics from the press and analyst communities) is present in the greatest concentration. The firm said its investment would run to hundreds of millions of pounds,

and followed a £500m payout over the previous two years in order to meet increased demand for data.

>> ‘spray and pray’ just isn’t going to be adequate

>> up to 50% of capacity consumed by as little as 2% of users