Global average smartphone cellular data usage will reach 5GB per month by 2021 from 2GB in 2017, according to Juniper Research.

The average data usage will increase leading to almost three-fold rise in cellular traffic to exceed 318,000PB by 2021.

This will put pressure on telecom network operators. American wireless major Sprint has tied up with Ericsson to trial 4K content delivery over 5G networks.

Global average tablet cellular data usage will exceed 3.3GB per month by 2021 from 1.5GB in 2017.

Video to account for 60 percent of global mobile data traffic in 2017, before approaching 80 percent by 2021

Traffic generated by cellular connected M2M systems will approach 6,000PB by 2021, dominated by the automotive sector.

Cellular-connected fixed devices including notebooks and eReaders will onload 20 percent of total traffic to mobile networks in 2017.

Data traffic generated by smartphone, tablets and feature phones will grow four-fold between 2017 and 2021 to reach 774,000PB.

Annual cellular data traffic, generated by smartphones, tablets, connected cars, and other M2M modules, will reach 129,000 PB (Petabytes) by 2018.

Over 60 percent of global mobile data traffic will be offloaded via Wi-Fi networks in 2017.

High quality of experience while offloading data users will be essential for network monetization strategies.

“Telecom operators need to support a user-experience comparable to that of cellular. Whilst progress has been made in, for example, refining handoffs between cellular and Wi-Fi, there is still room for improvement by implementing better network management and planning tools,” said Nitin Bhas of Juniper Research.