Middle East and Africa region is consuming mobile data like sucking on water. Recently CISCO has released a report for mobile network traffic which forecasts the mobile traffic growth in the coming 5 years.
Global mobile data traffic grew 69 percent in 2014. Middle East and Africa grew 107 percent. Global mobile data traffic reached 2.5 exabytes per month at the end of 2014, up from 1.5 exabytes per month at the end of 2013.
Last year’s mobile data traffic was nearly 30 times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000. One exabyte of traffic traversed the global Internet in 2000, and in 2014 mobile networks carried nearly 30 exabytes of traffic.
The Middle East and Africa will have the strongest mobile data traffic growth of any region with a 72‑percent CAGR. This region will be followed by Central and Eastern Europe at 71 percent and Latin America at 59 percent.
Several global mobile carriers have recently launched or announced a launch of voice-over-Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) service. Voice over Wi-Fi is not a new concept, but the earlier solutions had several limitations that affected the adoption and ultimately the end-user experience. Since then several enhancements in VoWi-Fi that now make it a carrier-grade user-experience have been made. This service can now be offered independent of the hardware capabilities of the device as long as the device has Wi-Fi enabled on it, even non-SIM devices such as Wi-Fi-only tablets can have this service turned on.
VoWi-Fi not only can extend the reach of MNOs by enabling them to deliver a cost-effective, scalable, and quality solution for delivering in building coverage, where cellular coverage might be sketchy, but also can help them battle the erosion of revenue from over-the-top providers’ (OTTPs’) VoIP offers.
Figure 20 shows that VoWi-Fi is going to surpass voice over LTE (VoLTE) by 2018 in terms of minutes of use. By 2019, VoWi-Fi will have 53 percent of mobile IP voice, up from less than a tenth of a percent in 2014.
Regionally, Asia Pacific will lead throughout the forecast period with the highest number of IPv6-capable devices and connections, reaching 2.9 billion by 2019. Middle East and Africa and Central and Eastern Europe will have the highest growth rates during the forecast period, both at 30-percent CAGR.
Click here to to a detailed report.
