WWEE Update

This is another update on WWEE. While the previous newsletters on this topic gave qualitative information, now quantitative data is in the public domain. Specifically, it is the amount of data being transfered by people using mobile devices such as a Blackberry, iPhone, computers, etc. It does not pertain to the number of cell phone voice calls. It pertain to people accessing the internet to get data and video information.

The Sunday, February 14, 2010, Charlotte Observer had an article titled “Warning! Data traffic jam ahead”. The subject of the article is the projected volume of data on mobile devices accessing the internet in the US and how infrastructure has to be added now to avoid a future logjam. Keep in mind that this same situation will also occur in other countries around the world, this is not a US only phenomenon.

Quantitative Data for the US Market:

Number of US mobile subscribers accessing the internet: 2008 = 34 million devices, 2014 = 106 million devices. This means that in 4 years, 1 in 3 people will accessing the internet in a mobile manner. My opinion, is that this is conservative and actually more people will have mobile devices.

The projected US Mobile Data Usage in Petabytes per month is shown below. Let me explain a Petabyte. Peta means 1,000 trillion, you know the number that is the size of the US deficit. A byte refers a symbol or character that is comprised of bits of data. A Petabyte is a really, really big deal.

2008 = 6
2009 = 17
2010 = 41
2011 = 91
2012 = 201
2013 = 397

This means that data growth is tripling now and doubling in the future. This means that in 4 years roughly 10 trillion bytes of data traffic will exist per minute. I think this is also conservative given my view of the number of devices that will be in use.

This is a major market move and one to be considered for investing. The constraint for all of this data is not the number of devices connecting to an antenna but rather the back-haul from the antenna to the network. For this data flow to happen, significant money, like Billions of Dollars, has to be invested in infrastructure like antennas, towers, cable, electronics, etc and the investment has to occur now.