Tablet PCs Will Yield Almost One Fifth Of All Wireless Traffic By 2020, Says Cisco

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Anyone else think this goes a long way toward explaining some of Cisco’s recent moves? They’ve released a report, the key conclusion of which is their projection that tablet PCs will generate fully 17 percent–almost one fifth–of all wireless traffic by 2020.

Cisco’s report reveals some already stark truths about the nature of portable computing and its relation to data transmission. For instance, tablet computers already generate five times more data transmissions than smartphones, mostly because tablets often find themselves working more with media. Seriously, would you rather watch that hilarious YouTube video on an iPhone or an iPad?

The numbers are even more telling–the average tablet (and that’s just the average) runs through about 405 meg of traffic every month. Smartphones, meanwhile, only pull about 79 meg in that same month. What’s more, tablets are increasing their data transmissions at about a third–30 percent–every month. Basically, if that statistic holds, you’re going to have a strange new version of Moore’s Law on your hands, in which it becomes “tablet demand on the network doubles every four months”.

And it makes sense, too: as more tablets hit the market and more people become tablet users, their aggregate demands for bandwidth increase. This too lends some credence to Cisco’s own recent moves like dumping the Flip camcorder line and making an enterprise-class tablet, now taking pre-orders as our own J.Angelo Racoma spotted a while back, the Cius.

But the greater implications are unnerving in their own right. As more data transmissions are created, the demands on current infrastructure grow. And, as we saw with the growth of smartphones, that resulted in a lot of throttling. Will we see tablet PCs fall under the same issue? Or will this spur needed investment in infrastructure to get everybody fatter pipes?

I personally hope it’s the latter, but fear it will be the former. Either way, it’s a concept worth watching as Cisco puts some disturbing numbers up for us.