Global Data Volume: Mobile Network Data Traffic Statistics

This report tracks how much data moves across the world's networks. The first edition focuses on mobile network data traffic, measured by Ericsson from operator data and published in the Ericsson Mobility Report.

Total monthly global mobile network data traffic exceeded 220 EB in the second quarter of 2026 [1]. One exabyte is one billion gigabytes. Ericsson's figure includes traffic generated by Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) services [1].

Mobile network data traffic rose 23% between Q2 2025 and Q2 2026, and around 6% between Q1 2026 and Q2 2026 [1]. Ericsson said growth in the 12 months to Q1 2026 was 22% and exceeded expectations [3].

Monthly traffic rose from just over 30 EB in Q2 2019 to 220 EB in Q2 2026 [1]. That is roughly a seven-fold increase in seven years (freereports.online calculation). Ericsson notes that the year-on-year growth rate had been declining slowly overall, but has risen slightly since Q1 2025 [1].

• Ericsson says traffic growth comes from both rising smartphone subscriptions and higher average data use per subscription, driven mainly by video [1].
• Video accounted for around 75% of all mobile data traffic at the end of 2025 [1].
• India and North America drove most of the year-on-year growth in Q2 2026 [1].
• Half of the world's mobile data traffic is now carried over 5G, up from 48% at the end of 2025 [3].
• 5G subscriptions passed 3 billion in the first quarter of 2026, reaching 3.1 billion [4].
• Around 70% of FWA service providers now offer the service over 5G [2].

Uplink traffic is growing faster than downlink for many operators. Of 55 operators Ericsson analysed, 43 saw uplink growth outpace downlink growth, and 17 reported uplink growth exceeding downlink by a factor of 1.5 or more [3]. Ericsson's scenario modelling suggests AI-driven traffic could lift uplink demand threefold by 2031 compared with 2025 [3].

Ericsson forecasts that 85% of mobile data traffic will be carried over 5G by the end of 2031 [3]. This is a forecast.

Traffic figures are monthly averages for the quarter, in exabytes (EB), from Ericsson's mobile traffic update and the June 2026 Ericsson Mobility Report [1][2]. They include FWA traffic and exclude fixed broadband traffic [1]. Secondary summaries of the June 2026 report from IEEE ComSoc Technology Blog and GSA are used for the 5G traffic share, the uplink analysis and 5G subscription counts [3][4].

The Q2 2019 value of about 30 EB is read from Ericsson's description of its chart as "just over 30 EB" [1]. The roughly seven-fold rise is a freereports.online calculation dividing 220 EB by about 30 EB.

Not yet covered: total data created worldwide, fixed internet traffic (ITU, Cisco, Sandvine) and data center capacity. These were not verified from primary sources for this edition and are left out rather than estimated.