Ericsson Sees Video Fuelling Tenfold Rise in Mobile Data Traffic by 2021

Swedish telecoms network gear maker Ericsson on Tuesday raised its forecast for mobile data traffic growth as the use of video increases while the number of smartphone subscriptions continues to rise.

Ericsson, the world's top mobile network equipment maker, expects a tenfold surge in mobile data traffic between 2015 and 2021, while in June it forecast an eightfold growth between 2014 and 2020.

"Based on recent network measurements, a stronger than

anticipated growth of average data traffic consumption per user resulted in a significant upward adjustment of our forecast," Ericsson said.

Video is expected to increase its share of total mobile traffic in 2021 to 70 percent, up from around 50 percent in 2015, Ericsson said.

In its semi-annual Mobility Report, Ericsson said it expected there to be 6.4 billion smartphone subscriptions globally by the end of 2021, up from 3.4 billion in 2015, due to greater affordability in developing markets.

It repeated its expectation that fifth-generation mobile telephony will be commercially deployed in 2020.

"In 2021, South Korea, Japan, China and the US are expected to have the fastest uptake of 5G subscriptions," Ericsson said.

The new generation of mobile phone technology is expected not only to bring higher data speeds, but also to better accommodate a wide variety of connected devices.

© Thomson Reuters 2015