Wi-Fi broadband networks to take nine exabytes from mobile by 2015

The rise of femtocells, which can provide short-range mobile phone coverage in locations such as homes, offices and shops, could move on-the-go internet traffic back on to the wired broadband core network.

Femtocells connect to mobile operators via broadband, meaning mobile phones using them to access the internet do not place as much of a data demand on the 3G or 4G network as usual.

Juniper Research expects that, by the middle of the decade, about nine exabytes - or roughly nine billion gigabytes - could be offloaded from mobile networks to the core broadband grid.

"The volume of data traffic offloaded from mobile networks will continue to grow strongly throughout the next five years as the total volume of data traffic delivered to mobile devices accelerates," the analyst forecasts.

In this way, the mobile networks can be freed up to provide the capacity needed for further new features, while still delivering good-quality connections and competitive data transfer rates to customers.