Survey: WiFi Nets To Handle Explosion of Mobile Video

Mobile devices will generate the equivalent of 10 billion Avengers: Age of Ultron's worth of data by 2019, but that most of that traffic (59%) will be offloaded to WiFi networks to handle the load.

That is according to a new study from Juniper Research.

The study predicts that average smartphone and tablet data use will double in the next four years, with the rise in daily media consumption driven primarily by a rise in 4G and HD video.

“Certainly, video is forming an ever-greater proportion of network traffic," said research author Nitin Bhas. Juniper expects video traffic over smartphones will grow eight-fold over those four years, noting that it already accounts for 60% of global IP traffic.

The Far East and China are powering some of that data growth. In 2014, for example, that sector for the first time generated more data traffic than North America.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.