Internet data growth faces larger bandwidth bottlenecks

Nature : Global internet traffic is growing by about 22% per year, with demand from mobile alone growing at an estimated 53% rate. The infrastructure to handle that growth is outdated in many areas and occasionally gets overwhelmed. In some cases private companies like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook lay high-bandwidth fiber optic cables between countries, yet many areas still use legacy copper telephone cables. On the mobile side, second-generation (2G) networks are being phased out in favor of 3G and 4G networks in much of the world but still account for 75% of mobile subscriptions in Africa and the Middle East. Even at 100 megabits per second, 4G networks will need to be upgraded to 5G, which is 100 times faster, by the mid 2020s to meet expected data demands. Those networks will have to support significantly more devices with the growth of the “Internet of Things"—networked devices such as fitness trackers, home appliances, and more.