For 2022, ITU estimated mobile- and fixed-broadband traffic rates to enable the computation of global and regional aggregates. In this context, traffic refers to end user Internet traffic.
Global mobile-broadband traffic rates were estimated to have reached 913 exabytes (EB) in 2022, more than twice the traffic of 2019 (419 EB). Up from just 1 991 in 2019, fixed-broadband traffic rates were estimated to have increased to 4 378 EB in 2022 (nearly five times those of mobile-broadband traffic). Between 2019 and 2023, mobile- and fixed-broadband traffic has had an estimated annual average growth of 30 per cent, with a peak rate of growth at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Post-pandemic traffic growth slowed between 2021 and 2022: mobile-broadband traffic increased by 22 per cent, and fixed broadband increased by 10 per cent.
Fixed broadband remains the service of choice for heavy Internet data usage. During the pandemic, a considerable share of mobile traffic was rerouted through fixed networks using home Wi-Fi connections. In 2020, fixed broadband accounted for 96.6 per cent of all Internet traffic. In 2022, the mobile-broadband share of traffic had increased from 3.4 to 4.2 per cent.
In 2022, the monthly average fixed-broadband traffic per subscription reached 257 gigabytes (GB) worldwide, compared to the mobile-broadband traffic per subscription average of 11 GB. While the average annual increase of fixed-broadband traffic per subscription was 21 per cent over the 2019 to 2022 period, that average showed a remarkable slowdown in growth, increasing by just 3 per cent from 2021 to 2022.
In contrast, following network infrastructure upgrades, the deployment of 5G networks, and increasing demand, mobile-broadband traffic per subscription increased by 26 per cent every year between 2019 and 2021, and with only a relatively minor slowdown, grew by a further 17 per cent between 2021 and 2022.
There are also striking regional differences in mobile- and fixed-broadband traffic per subscription. In the Americas, a fixed-broadband subscription generates 326 GB of traffic per month, compared with 130 GB in Africa. The gap is even wider for mobile broadband traffic. In Africa, the monthly mobile broadband traffic average per subscription reached 1.9 GB, about six times less than the world average (11.2 GB) and eight times less than the CIS region average (15.1 GB).
Gaps in terms of Internet traffic are associated with income levels. Monthly Internet traffic averages per fixed-broadband subscription rise dramatically with increases in income levels, from 161 GB per subscription in low-income economies, to as much as 347 GB per subscription in high-income economies. For mobile broadband, middle- and high-income economies generate very similar traffic averages, from about 10 to 12 GB per month, which represents almost a ten-fold difference with low-income economies (1.3 GB). A possible explanation could be that, in contrast with fixed-broadband services, mobile-broadband plans in middle- and high-income economies typically have a data allowance cap, effectively imposing a supply-side constraint.
The average subscription in LDCs stood at merely 33 and 29 per cent of the global average in terms of fixed- and mobile-broadband traffic, respectively. In terms of income and infrastructure, SIDS is a more heterogenous group of States, which includes Singapore’s high fixed-broadband penetration rates and LDCs relying at most on mobile services, with above-average fixed-broadband traffic per subscription and below-average mobile-broadband traffic per subscription.