BANGALORE, INDIA: Worldwide mobile connections will reach 5.6 billion in 2011, up 11 per cent from 5 billion connections in 2010, according to information technology research and advisory company Gartner, Inc.

The research also projected the mobile data services revenue to total $314.7 billion in 2011, a 22.5 per cent increase from 2010 revenue of $257 billion.

"Mobile data traffic will increase significantly as more people will have access to mobile data networks, there is a migration toward smartphones and an increase in sales of media tablets," said Jessica Ekholm, principal research analyst at Gartner.

She added that mobile data volumes would continue to grow as mobile data networks become faster and more ubiquitous, while at the same time the number of data users and data usage per user was expected to grow.

"Data revenue will continue to grow but at a much slower rate," Jessica said.

"This is causing a decoupling between revenue and data traffic, and it is also creating an increase in network costs for carriers as they try to sustain growing data traffic."

According to the research findings, worldwide cellphone connections will experience steady growth through 2015, when mobile connections are forecast to reach 7.4 billion, and mobile data revenue is expected to reach $552 billion.

In calculating its forecast, Gartner assumed that there were four major mobile data traffic drivers – growth in the number of mobile connections, increasing availability of higher-speed data-centric mobile networks, smartphones, and data-consuming content and applications, said a release.

A growing number of mobile connections would lead to higher demands on communication service providers' (CSPs') data networks, as more people accessed the networks to use mobile data and to send text messages, added the release.

In addition to the total number of connections growing, Gartner has projected that mobile data usage per connection would increase throughout the forecast period and that there would be a shift in mobile users' perception of mobile data around the world, as data plans go from being seen as a luxury, to being considered a nice-to-have service, to finally being perceived as potentially essential.

The research agency has also predicted communications service providers (CSPs) to increasingly start moving toward offering more flexible and more personalized data plans, which should help capture a larger mobile data user base.

"What carriers currently need are innovative ways to increase data revenue, while finding smart solutions to manage a growing demand in data," said Sylvain Fabre, research director at Gartner. "Ultimately, it will be the consumer who chooses the content he or she wants to use, and carriers need to ensure that the quality of experience is good. A substandard user experience may lead to higher churn."