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Tablet Bandwidth Demand 3X that of Smartphones
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Tablet Bandwidth Demand 3X that of Smartphones

May 16, 2012

By Gary Kim, Contributing Editor


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Even though most tablet users, to this point, have been using their devices only on Wi-Fi networks, the impact on traffic is starting to surface. A new study by ByteMobile suggests that on average, operators process three times more data volume on their networks for tablets than for smartphones.


That should not come as a surprise; PCs routinely impose a load an order of magnitude greater than a typical smartphone. The average monthly 3G traffic in 2011 was highest for laptops (1-7 GB), followed by tablets (250-800 MB) and smartphones (80-600 MB), according to Akamai.

And given significant use of tablets for video content consumption, the 300-percent difference in network load, compared to smartphones, is not unexpected.

The new report shows the potential impact of tablet usage on operator networks as adoption by both consumers and business users accelerates, and especially as tablet adoption grows.

Forrester Research (News - Alert), for example, estimates that a third of U.S. adults will own a tablet by 2016, with penetration reaching 112 million.

The report also highlights how faster networks can drive increased revenues as users immediately begin consuming higher-quality video content. On average, a network with a bit rate of 300 kbps delivers 74 percent of requested videos at 240-pixel resolution. A network with a bit rate of 600 kbps delivers 66 percent of requested videos at 380p and 480p resolution.

Another finding is that the majority of videos traversing mobile networks are requested by multiple subscribers. On average, over half of all videos are requested and served multiple times. Approximately 16 percent of videos are requested more than 100 times over the same mobile network.

Those sorts of traffic patterns obviously point to the value of local caching or other content delivery techniques that reduce the transit of identical content across the wide area networks.

During peak traffic periods, repeat requests for videos increase from 31 percent to 50 percent.




Edited by Braden Becker

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