Mobile data offloading is expected to increase to 48% by 2015 from 16% of mobile data as currently diverted from mobile networks. According to a new study from ABI Research, data traffic itself will have grown by a factor of 30, meaning that offloaded data will expand 100-fold.

Traffic overloads that are starting to choke many mobile networks will only worsen as smartphones and other mobile devices proliferate, and operators must extend capacity. 

According to report, brute force network expansion, requiring a doubling of capacity, isn’t an option. Instead, several approaches and technologies will play specific roles in relieving network congestion. These include Wi-Fi, femtocells, mobile CDNs (content delivery networks) media optimization, and more. 

ABI Research practice director Aditya Kaul says, “Each of these offload and optimization technologies is aimed at solving a particular problem and they will all coexist. Wi-Fi is effective in covering limited areas containing many users, such as transport stations and sports venues. A femtocell, in contrast, is a good solution for targeting small numbers of heavy data users. Mobile CDNs attack the problem of frequently-used content, for example a video that has ‘gone viral’, by caching the file locally rather than loading it onto the network for each download request.”

Mobile Network Offloading explores the market drivers and end-user demand for each mobile data offloading technology, including an end-to-end cost comparison for alternative data paths. The focus of this report is on overloaded 3G networks, and it closely examines the technologies available to augment an existing network. Market dynamics leading to new operator business strategies are highlighted, and detailed forecasts are provided to illustrate the growth trends in key monitoring/optimization segments.