Exploring mobile traffic trends 2020–2024

One-tenth of subscribers generate around 65 percent of traffic

The distribution of traffic is highly uneven across subscriber clusters with varying monthly data consumption. A relatively small number of subscribers generate the majority of the total mobile traffic. In the sampled European service provider’s 4G/5G network in 2024, subscribers consuming over 20 GB per month represented only around 10 percent of all subscribers, but generated 65 percent of the total traffic. On the other hand, subscribers with a monthly data consumption of over 50 GB represented only around 3 percent of all subscribers, but generated 37 percent of the total traffic. Subscribers consuming less than 5 GB per month made up the majority of all subscribers, representing 73 percent, but generated only 10 percent of the total traffic.

A doubling of subscribers with data consumption between 20 and 50 GB per month

Looking at the traffic changes between 2020 and 2024, the share of traffic for subscribers consuming less than 10 GB per month has fallen from almost 40 percent in 2020 to around 20 percent in 2024, while the traffic share of subscribers consuming more than 20 GB per month has increased from 44 to 64 percent over the same period.

This strong traffic increase is also reflected in the growing share of subscribers consuming more than 20 GB per month, which increased from around 4 percent to 9 percent between 2020 and 2024. The strongest growth in share of subscribers was in the cluster that consumes between   20 and 50 GB per month, which more than doubled its share, rising from around 3 percent in 2020 to 6 percent in 2024. The increase in the number of subscribers consuming more than 20 GB per month is thought to be a result of more affordable service plans with increased data allowances, migrating subscribers to higher-tier data plans, as well as the increased consumption of data-intense content like video.

Between 2020 and 2024, this network experienced an annual traffic growth of approximately 50 percent, despite a relatively stable number of users. This trend suggests that the surge in data traffic is primarily fueled by existing users consuming increasingly more data, rather than an expanding user base.

When analyzing the application mix and the share of traffic in the sampled European service provider´s network, it should be considered that the sample might not represent the absolute shares of the total traffic, as some traffic could not be classified. For example, the absolute share of video traffic is presumably higher across all subscriber clusters, as part of it is included in the category titled “Other”.[1] However, it remains true that analyzing the relative changes in application mix across subscriber clusters provides insights into changes in application usage between 2020 and 2024.

Video traffic has become increasingly dominant, having had the strongest growth across all subscriber clusters from 2020 to 2024. The share of video traffic growth in the network was 50 percent over that period.

Aside from video, communication traffic, which predominantly came from Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Facebook, has seen consistent growth across all subscriber clusters, increasing its share by around 26 percent to reach about a 5 percent share of all traffic in 2024. The most significant growth is observed in the subscriber cluster that consumes more than 100 GB per month, which doubled its traffic share over the same period. However, communication traffic continues to make up a larger proportion among lower-usage subscriber clusters that consume less than 10 GB per month.

The social networking share of traffic appears to have decreased, but that is mostly due to the reclassification of traffic from social networking platforms, like TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, compared to 2020. For example, short videos (Reels) viewed while scrolling in the Facebook app are categorized as social networking, whereas uploading videos from the camera or phone gallery is categorized as video. In 2024, the social networking traffic share is highest among subscriber clusters with data consumption less than 10 GB per month, where it is around 8 percent of all traffic.

Web browsing saw an overall drop of 50 percent from a 14 percent share of traffic in 2020 to 7 percent in 2024.[2] Among subscribers with data consumption less than 5 GB per month, web browsing declined from 20 percent of traffic in 2020 to just 13 percent in 2024. A similar trend can be observed across all subscriber clusters with a 30–50 percent decline in web browsing traffic share over the period.

Cloud storage services almost tripled in traffic share across all subscriber clusters, going from around 1 percent to 3 percent, with the highest shares among subscribers with data consumption less than 10 GB per month.

Audio services doubled its overall traffic share from 0.4 percent to around 0.8 percent, with the strongest growth and highest shares – just above 1 percent – among subscribers with data consumption less than 10 GB per month.

The software download share of traffic has the highest share among subscribers with data consumption more than 100 GB per month, where it accounts for over 6 percent of traffic. Among subscribers with data consumption lower than 10 GB per month, the traffic share for software download is well below 1 percent, but has doubled its share since 2020.

Gaming’s[3] share of traffic decreased among subscribers with data consumption more than 50 GB per month, but increased its share by more than 30 percent among subscribers with data consumption less than 10 GB per month. The overall increase of gaming’s share of traffic was 8 percent, reaching a 1.5 percent share of all traffic in 2024.

File sharing has decreased its share of traffic across all subscriber clusters, with a 60 percent decrease in its share of all traffic from 1.2 to 0.5 percent in 2024.