We spend our lives on screens
We already spend a large part of our leisure time on screens. A study (Digital 2024: Global Overview Report, 18-64 years) estimates Internet screen time at 5 hours 17 minutes a day in France, below the world average (6 hours 40 minutes), while the record of 9 hours 21 minutes is held by South Africa.
Half of all Internet time is spent on smartphones. And overall, half of all screen time (including TV) is spent watching TV or video. But these figures vary with age, with younger people being much more connected than their elders —a factor that helps explain differences between countries like South Africa and France.
To put these figures into perspective, the time spent on leisure, socializing and domestic tasks was 8.06 hours in 2010 (the next INSEE study on free time is scheduled for 2026). Finally, 60% of leisure time is spent on screens (study by Vertigo Search, 2022), which also includes terrestrial TV. With working hours and other physiological activities broadly constant, we are undoubtedly approaching an asymptote of personal digital time.
Video definition is the factor with the greatest impact on traffic
To understand the impact of usage on consumption, you need to know that the same application can have very different effects, depending on the quality used:
- A streaming video represents between 500 MB/h (SD) and 10 GB/h (4K).
- A social network exchange takes between 100 MB/h and 2 GB/h, depending on the quantity of video.
- Other activities such as web browsing, gaming and videoconferencing account for around 200 MB/h.
Multiple studies (such as the 2024 Global Internet Phenomena Report by Sandvine) agree that streaming video dominates overall internet traffic, accounting for more than 80% of it. Ultimately, the resolution of video and the type of device used to watch it are key drivers in the growth of data volumes.
Other uses cases, like cloud gaming and VR/XR, still have a limited and uncertain impact on overall traffic. Virtual reality and gaming require a vast amount of data to create immersive and complex environments. Today, many virtual worlds still must be downloaded, and the storage capacities of devices (headsets, consoles) restricts the richness of experiences.
Traffic growth is driven by demand, but also determined by the performance
Fixed data consumption per user (per household) is much higher than mobile (per individual), mainly due to the devices used and the context of use. At home, consumption takes place on larger screens that enable high-resolution video streaming: TVs, tablets and laptops. Users also tend to engage in these activities for longer periods. Furthermore, fixed connections also serve as hubs for mobiles. It is estimated that between 50% and 80% of data from cell phones is routed via Wi-Fi to fixed networks.
In France, fixed broadband data usage is about 200 GB per month, while mobile data use is around 15 GB per month per mobile user, over 10 times lower !
These averages hide major generational differences. In France, for example, 15–24-year-olds spend about 3 hours and 58 minutes on their phones daily, while people over 65 averages just 1 hour and 32 minutes. National demographic profiles also help explain variations in screen time across countries.
Network performance has an influence on usage: each mobile generation (4G then 5G) offers more performance, which in turn stimulates more intensive usage. Worldwide 5G accesses in 2024 thus averaged 20 GB/month/user, compared with 8 GB/month/user for other generations.
Similarly, the shift from ADSL to fiber (FTTH) dramatically boosted connection speeds: the average in France jumped from 13.5 Mbps in 2017 (with only 18% fiber penetration) to 176.7 Mbps in 2024 (with 67% fiber penetration).
Traffic will more than double
According to the IUT, global Internet traffic in 2023 will amount to 1074 exabytes for mobile and 5100 exabytes for fixed - or 6174 billion terabytes (1 TB ~ one hard disk). Projections suggest fixed traffic will double, and mobile traffic will triple by 2030. China and India account for 50% of mobile traffic , China and the United States for 50% of fixed traffic.
Key growth drivers include:
- Device adoption in developing countries where smartphones aren't yet dominant.
- The Roll out of next-gen networks, especially 5G. By 2028, 5G is expected to handle 75% of mobile traffic. Fixed broadband subscriptions should grow by 20%, reaching 1.7 billion in 2028. At that point, FTTH will account for 77% of fixed connections (an 8-point increase).
- Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) over 5G is also expected to grow substantially. Ericsson predicts it will account for 35% of mobile traffic by 2030, with up to 50 million FWA connections by 2028—equivalent to the load of 500 million mobile phones.
- The rate of equipment of 4K high-definition televisions in developed countries will play a role as well
The infrastructure to handle the traffic is already in place
To serve the 5.4 billion cell phone owners (IUT 2024), it is estimated that the mobile infrastructure is made up of between 8 and 10 million sites hosting antennas and/or base stations serving from 1,000 (4G) to several thousand subscribers (5G). For the most part, these 4G sites will be used for 5G, absorbing the traffic. Some sites will need to be reinforced with fiber.
Fixed FTTH fiber access is connected to hundreds of millions of optical terminals, typically serving 32 subscribers per branch. The construction of future fiber accesses will be achieved by increasing the fill rate of optical trees (in Europe, only 50% of passed homes he subscribed), but also by building new infrastructures.
To put the new space into perspective, low-earth orbit satellites (such as Starlink), at any one time, cover only 39% of the total surface area (the earth's landmass), of which only 15% is habitable. It's mainly these areas that are covered by fiber and antennas. New space will contribute only marginally to absorbing traffic growth.
Conclusion
Looking ahead 5 to 10 years, the infrastructure needed to support rising traffic volumes appears to be an extension of what already exists, with a relatively conservative outlook centered around video. In fact, in some high-usage countries, data traffic per user could eventually plateau. Will some declare the "end of network history"?
But other data storms are on the horizon. generative AI (services such as chat GPT) is becoming increasingly multimodal, involving not just text but also voice, images, and video. What's more, this information will be exchanged by computer agents (agentic AI), who will take the place of humans - that can operate without constraints of time, place, or identity. One person might have multiple agents working in parallel, multiplying sources of traffic.
Ultimately, new objects such as high-definition cameras (drones, video surveillance, glasses, etc.) or autonomous vehicles will need very high bandwidth capacities.
The network of the (very near) future may have to be designed more for machines.
