How fast is data consumption growing? Well, have you ever seen one of those petri dishes with a bacteria sample left in front of a time-lapse camera? It’s growing that fast. Every day, someone finishes their day late at night looking at that last video, sending the last email or chirping one last tweet. And while they reach over to turn out the light and turn off the smartphone, someone on the other side of the world is starting up their daily routine, generating the same amount or more in data movement. Multiplied by the billions of people digitally connected around the world, the data movement size is growing exponentially each year.
What Exactly Are We Doing? A Lot.
Right now, the estimated U.S. data consumption every minute (that’s every 60 seconds) equals something in the neighborhood of 4.4 million gigabytes of data. Within that figure is 188 million emails and 18.1 million texts. Seemingly almost minuscule in comparison but representing huge chunks of related data movement, 390,000 apps are downloaded as well.
But what does all this data movement mean? What does it relate to in activity, living and function? Well, from the artistic perspective, it’s a movement of 4.8 million images or 694,500 hours of video. It could also involve 278,000 Instagram posts or 511,200 tweets. Taken another way, a minute of data movement can equal 232,000 Skype calls, or 1,389 reservations booked in Airbnb locations. Relationship-wise, 1.4 million Tinder swipes can happen within 60 seconds, and the core of Internet traffic produces 4.5 million requests to Google’s search engine. And somehow the entirety of the Internet’s infrastructure is carrying this load every minute. Worse, the amount of traffic compressed in the same time window is growing each year, getting bigger.
What’s to Come, and is There Room?
Estimates are that the number of worldwide Internet users will continue to increase at an annual rate of approximately 9 percent. While some will argue that this infers the current data level is just a starting point, all can agree that maintaining 9 percent growth leaves a lot of room for more demand to occur in the near future. At its most optimistic, global Internet growth is maybe at 57% of all potential users. That means a full capacity it at least almost double what the current data consumption level is today. And, as faster and faster data transmission channels become available, larger data products will naturally be taken for granted as accessible on demand, driving the data curve up even higher.
We don’t have the answer as to exactly when the world will be close to full data consumption capacity. However, we can definitely predict with a high level of comfort that high-speed Internet access is becoming a must for more and more of our daily lives. Without it, your business and personal life will progressively become delayed and disrupted. As many in the tech industry agree, the question of shifting to a high-speed Internet channel is not an “if” but rather a “when” question which everyone eventually will be forced to answer.PS LIGHTWAVE provides high-speed, fiber internet for public and private commercial entities in the Greater Houston and surrounding areas. We also urge you to test your internet speed with our SpeedQuest test.
Through our high-quality infrastructure, innovative technology and expert, locally based support, we deliver not only the best in connectivity and reliability but in scalability and redundancy. We invite you to learn more about our services and test your internet speed with our SpeedQuest test.
