As more and more mobile customers opt for smartphones capable of surfing the web at 3G speeds (and 4G on US carrier Sprint), mobile data use is growing profoundly.’a0 According to UK consultancy Coda, data traffic will reach 327 petabytes by 2015.’a0 To put that in perspective, a petabyte is 1000 terabytes, and a terabyte is 1000 gigabytes, so 327 petabytes is a massive amount of data per month!

What does all this mean?’a0 At current network capacity, many major metro areas in the United States will reach 100% utilization in 2012 during peak times.’a0 Customers in areas such as New York, Boston, and San Francisco may have major troubles using their mobile devices in the middle of the business day.

So, how does a telco handle all this traffic?’a0 Coda is suggesting tiered priced plans, that is, no more ‘unlimited 3G data’ for US mobile customers.

Demand Going Nowhere But Up

As CTIA recently showed, US mobile carriers are keen to drive mobile broadband subscriptions for increased profitability.’a0 And with new mobile phones coming out that advertise the ability to stream and upload mobile video such as the Sprint EVO, video services will add to an already strained situation.

If tiered data plans are in Americans’ future, this will add confusion to an already complicated phone purchasing process.’a0 We have tiered minute plans that customers struggle with at present, if complex data plans are layered on, the situation will get worse.

Mobile carriers will have to get creative and figure out how to accommodate a rapidly growing data hungry user base.’a0 This will likely involve investing lots of capital into building new backhaul and augmenting existing tower connections to increase bandwidth.

(Photo Credit: Flickr User Dhammika Heenpella)