As the rollout of 5G technologies continue to drive data consumption globally, the latest forecasts suggest data consumption is only going to continue going up.
According to the June 2022 Ericsson Mobility Report the average monthly data consumption per smartphone was 12GB at the end of 2021, with expectations that it will surpass 15GB in 2022 and reach around 40GB by 2027.
If we think back just a few years to May 2016, reports were that the average data consumption per month for smartphone users was between 2GB, with a max of 5GB – it’s safe to say that the world is using more data today than ever before.
Oh, and the above is only talking smartphone data consumption.
Globally, estimates suggest that every day, humans use around 2.5 quintillion bytes (2.5 e+9 GB) of data – this is massive, and like all the reports suggest, it is only going to continue growing.
So, just what are we using this data for?
Well, according to TechJury, in 2022, some of the major ways we spend data include:
- Google Searches – that’s right. In 2022, Google gets more than 3.5 billion searches every day, or if you like a second by second count, we’re looking at around 40,000 search queries every second
- Social media – no massive surprise here, but according to the Global Web Index, 33% of the total time spent online around the entire world is spent using social media. Apart from social media, 16% of the time users spend online goes to online TV and streaming, and another 16% to music streaming. Online press takes a 13% share of total online time, whereas the remaining 22% of the time is reserved for other online activities.
- Facebook – we know, this fits into the social media category, but to reiterate just how much time people do spend on social media, every month 2.8 billion people actively use Facebook.
And, these are just a few of the reasons we consume so much data.
Before we go on, we wanted to leave you with just one more mind-blowing statistic, Unicorn Insights provided a breakdown of just how long it might take to download all of the data from the internet today – any guesses at how long it might take?
According to the survey provider, at an average download speed of 46Mbps, it would take an insane 181million years to download all the data from the internet today – wow!
We’re making the call here and now, in 2022, data is hands down the unsurpassed king of, well, everything!
Okay, so now we have lured you in with all the fascinating information, we’ve got to make a bit of a sales pitch right?
At Vecta Labs, we love data. We literally work hard every day to find ways to improve access to, help speed up and support our clients and their customers (aka you) improve your data experience.
To capture and serve the data consumers of the world, network operators have deployed new technologies and expanded networks at a frantic pace. As a result of these accelerated deployments, site planning, design and construction are often not scrutinised to the required level of quality to ensure network performance.
At Vecta Labs, we work hard to support these rollouts out by performing best practice investigation, remediation and acceptance of legacy and new sites ensuring that cells sites are correctly constructed and are delivering the performance needed to serve subscribers.
So, if you are a network operator and wanted to get in touch for a consult or to find out more, we’d love to help you out – please do reach out via contact@vectalabs.com and we’ll set up a bit of a chat and tell you some more about the work we do.