New research has found that the majority of traffic (63%) generated by smartphones, tablets and feature phones could soon transfer onto the fixed network via wifi and Femtocells by 2015. This means that increasingly slow and poorly performing mobile connections could get a whole lot better, boosting uptake of m-retailing.
The research by Juniper Research finds that the annual mobile data traffic offloaded from operators’ networks via wifi and Femtocells – super fast, super local wifi services – is forecast to reach nearly 9000 petabytes (PB) by 2015, which equates to a voluminous 11 billion movie downloads.
According to Mobile Data Offload & Onload reportauthor Nitin Bhas, “As a high percentage of mobile data consumption occurs while indoors or in motion, operators have an opportunity to offload data traffic onto complementary fixed networks via WiFi and Femtocells. Offloading also has the potential for creating new services and applications and enhancing the usage of existing services.”