📊 EV’s Charts of the Week #81
Hi, I’m Azeem Azhar. I convene Exponential View to help us understand how our societies and political economy will change under the force of rapidly accelerating technologies. Every Wednesday, I do this through Charts of the Week.
This is a member-only edition. You are welcome to forward this email to your friends and colleagues, or consider gifting a subscription of Exponential View to someone you love.
DEPT OF BANDWIDTH
Watch the frequency
It is astonishing when you think that global mobile network data traffic has increased nearly five-fold in four years and that this is set to continue for some years to come.
Faster and furiouser five
Takeup of 5G has been substantially more rapid than 4G. Consider that this requires installing new masts, base stations, backhaul, as well as ensuring consumers have 5G ready handsets.
The law of bandwidth
Usability supremo, Jakob Nielsen, observed that a user’s bandwidth typically grows by about 50% per annum, as postulated back in 1998. The trend is continuing. (Interesting fact: Jakob and I worked on a usability project in 2001.)
Star struck
As we’ve noted in previous editions, the cost of satellite bandwidth is declining with cumulative scale: a Wright’s Law relationship.