Mobile Data Traffic: 3.6 Billion Gigabytes a Month by 2014

It’s a truism that mobile data traffic these days is growing at an extraordinary rate. But that doesn’t make the findings of mobile data growth by Cisco (CSCO) any less dramatic. According to the company’s Visual Networking Index Global Mobile Data Forecast, worldwide mobile data traffic could hit 40 exabytes by 2014, or 3.6 exabytes per month (see table below; click to enlarge).

3.6 billion gigabytes per month.

Astonishing. In the past year alone, the volume of mobile Web traffic spiked 160 percent to 90 petabytes per month. And it’s growing at a rate 2.4 times faster than global fixed broadband data traffic.

Interestingly, a lot of this growth is being driven by mobile video. Cisco’s study found that mobile video will represent 66 percent of all mobile data traffic by 2014, increasing 66-fold from 2009 to 2014. Something to consider as we wait for Apple’s (AAPL) iPad to arrive at market and for Apple to nail down that “Best of TV” iTunes subscription offering it has been working on.