With surging video use, increased dependence on mobiles and the emergence of 4K TV streaming, worldwide data requirements were pushed to dizzying heights in 2016 – with total consumption passing one zettabyte (1 trillion GB) for the very first time.

Yet even as telecommunications networks work to keep up with demand, this figure will continue to grow: Cisco’s Visual Networking Index (VNI), a commonly used barometer of worldwide data usage, expects global data usage to rise to 2.3 ZB per year by 2020.

In Australia, several factors – including greater mobile usage, enthusiastic adoption of streaming video services and the national broadband network (nbn) boosting average speeds – are driving data consumption at a rapid pace.

Mobile data usage in 2016 was nine times higher than in 2011, with broadband growing six times during the same period. This was fueled not only by a surge in video usage – which the VNI has projected will account for 82 percent of internet traffic by 2020 – but also from episodic surges such as the millions of concurrent downloads every time popular applications or operating systems are updated.

These kinds of growth targets present significant challenges for telecommunications operators to ensure their back-end infrastructure and customer-facing connections are continuously upgraded.

A large proportion of the network carrying capacity that is predicted to be in place a few years from now, has not even been built yet

A large proportion of the network carrying capacity that is predicted to be in place a few years from now, has not even been built yet,” says Craig Hancock, Executive Director of Telstra Service Operations, noting that network capacity planning is an ongoing process that requires careful monitoring and forward planning. Preparing for that demand has been a key component of Telstra’s Network 2020 strategy, which includes rolling out 5G mobile services to provide 1Gbps mobile services in some CBDs by 2019 and increasing core network capacity many times over.

Core network increases will be particularly crucial as the NBN continues to add users. Its current base of more than 3.5 million users will nearly triple by the time the project is finished around 2021, adding additional pressure on back-end networks that are expected to grow from 1 terabit per second (Tbps) capacity to 8Tbps by 2020.

That capacity will be crucial to support aggregate demand from Telstra retail customers as well as customers of Telstra Wholesale (TW), where Mr. Hancock notes that growth in data demand is “amplified in wholesale”.

Telstra’s network planning teams regularly monitor ongoing usage trends and extrapolate these into future demand projections, which guide the prioritisation of future network investments. The long timeframe of the NBN has allowed this process to be undertaken with some certainty – yet the growing networks must also accommodate sporadic surges in demand.

These surges can compromise service quality for all users when large numbers of people try to access data services simultaneously. This happens, for example, at music festivals or large community events where clusters of people gather for a short time.

Telstra alleviates the pressure through the deployment of COW (Cell on Wheels) units that provide temporary surges in capacity to match rapidly changing demand.

These are temporary solutions that reflect the ebb and flow of daily life. But as the adoption from 1080i to 1080p and 4K video continues over time, the data burden posed by both mobile and fixed users will continue to increase.

“People don’t just want to sit at home and do this stuff,” says Mr. Hancock, “They want to do this everywhere they go. But to watch a video on your mobile, you’ve got to go through seven different network domains that have to work perfectly together. Telstra is tapping into next-generation operational support systems, including machine analytics, to factor all of this into capacity management and planning.”

In years to come, Telstra will be relying heavily on emerging 5G mobile standards to deliver faster connections with better performance shaping to match regular changes in mobile data consumption. Telstra is also investing $1.5b in the platforms and software which will deliver efficient data delivery.

These upgrades will be crucial in delivering a smooth and reliable user experience for both data and video services, no matter how many devices or people come online in the future.