Coda Research Consultancy, a technology research specialist, has recently conducted a study, which suggests that within the next eight years there will be more that 400 million users of mobile broadband and they will be using data of approximately 1.8 exabytes every month. This is 40 times the current rate of data consumption.

The study also estimated the growth in number of mobile broadband users in every continent. It will increase to 94 million in Europe, which is 135% more than the current number of users. In addition, the USA will have 58 million users and the Middle Eastern and African countries combined together will have 48 million users. However, the report predicts that the rate of growth would be highest in Asia-Pacific, which will dwarf all other growth rates.

Long Term Evolution, which is considered as the mobile broadband technology of the next era, will also start working by 2012. It will become one of the most common technologies, which may mean that many countries will directly adopt it without ever adopting 3G technology (more information at Mobile Broadband Genie).

However, Steve Smith, founder of Coda Research, said that this growth might prove risky for service providers. He said that the number of customers is going to increase and so is the data transfer. However, revenue per customer may go down, and this may make it a tight ropewalk for operators, as they will have to protect their profit margins.