GSMA is extraordinarily optimistic with its data growth forecasts
The GSMA’s latest report on the Mobile Europe Economy 2025 makes predictions of traffic growth as seen below.
These seem extraordinary optimistic. Take the UK, as an example. Ofcom’s recent data shows that in 2024 the annual growth in mobile data usage was 13.7%, having fallen by an average of 5% a year since 2020. To deliver the growth the GSMA predicts, UK mobile data growth would need to leap to 29%/year and stay there until 2030. That would reverse a trend of 5%/year decline to a 16% leap and then constant growth. Surely far more likely is that the trend of falling around 5%/year continues and we see growth below 10%/year in 2025.
Or take Europe as a whole. Another available forecast is from Ericsson, who tend to be optimistic and have as a result downgraded their forecast twice in 2024. They predict 2x growth for Europe for the same period whereas GSMA predict 3.2x. The GSMA forecast would require growth to increase to 22%/year and stay constant until 2030. The data on European growth over the 10 years 2013-2023 is shown below.
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Source W Webb, “The End of Telecoms History”
It is possible, of course, that suddenly this trend of growth reducing by around 5%/year will stop and data growth will flat-line at 20%+, but this looks unlikely. Even Ericsson expects continual declines in annual data growth.
The GSMA report says nothing about the basis of its forecast, nor does it discuss why it is so much more optimistic than others. It simply says “Mobile data traffic will continue to rise at a significant rate through to the end of the decade”. The rest of the report does not present any new usage cases that would materially increase data use.
Of course, everyone is entitled to make a forecast, and the accuracy of that forecast will only be known with time. But when the forecast requires what appears to be heroic changes in underlying trends then to have any credibility it needs to set out the basis on which it is made.
GSMA is a reputable trade association, representing the entire mobile operator community. But it is in danger of losing credibility when it makes forecasts that appear self-serving rather than plausible.
Founder @ Telosa Network - New Digital Infrastructure | Inventor Wireless Mobile Gambling | Entrepreneur | POTUS Advisor 2X
1 个月More spectrum!
Journalist/Analyst @ PolicyTracker | Spectrum Policy, 5G & WiFi
1 个月Hi William. I just checked Ericsson's report. It's 2030 forecast for data usage is 49 GB per user for western Europe and 42 GB for central and eastern Europe. Basically the same as the GSMA. It does seem like they disagree about the baseline though. Ericsson says 2024 usage is between 20 and 23 GB while the GSMA says we're on 15 GB in 2024.
Director, Product Marketing | Technology Strategy, Broadcom
1 个月William, thanks for your article. I tend to agree that all the numbers are hyper inflated. They are talking about use cases that are unlikely to materialize over mobile. They are still largely in the business of provisioning service via handsets and cars, with some smattering over laptops, tablets, watches and verticals - AND verticals are hard. The one area that has helped their story significantly, and most of the time it is not transparent, is the inclusion of fixed wireless for growth. Indoor use dominates demand. One house on fixed wireless is probably more than 10x that of an additional mobile subscriber. The thing is, the runway for fixed wireless is limited. Curious, I tried it in the US alongside my fixed broadband for a year. It's good for what you pay when no one is on the network in terms of throughput, but as people joined the performance continued to degrade. Note that the latency and jitter left something to be desired from day one. So regulators around the world have to decide if they want to allocate spectrum for a temporary bandaid, or rip that bandaid off and invest in fixed infrastructure which is needed for a more digital society (gigabit, AI, cloud, etc.).