Nearly 30 terabytes of data from a single Taylor Swift concert. Why do data volumes keep growing?

Taylor Swift's world tour is breaking records everywhere and in every field. AT&T, one of the main US mobile operators, recently announced that during the Eras Tour concert in Arlington, Texas, 28.9 terabytes of data moved through the AT&T network alone at the venue, The Verge reported. By the telecom company's estimate, one terabyte holds about 200,000 photos or 400 hours of video, so 28.9 TB of data would mean 5.8 million pictures or 11,560 hours of video footage. Considering how many superstars there are in the world and how much content is created in their wake, we quickly reach staggering quantities.

Against the background of such snippets it is no wonder that data volumes around the world keep growing. Where impressions used to be exchanged by phone or face to face, the standard now is sharing pictures and videos in real time, both on social media (often not on one but on several platforms at once) and directly with family or friends in a messaging app.

The International Data Corporation (IDC) has forecast that by 2025 the global data volume will reach 175 zettabytes (1 ZB = a billion TB). "If you could store 175 zettabytes of data on Blu-ray discs, you would have 23 stacks of discs reaching from the Earth to the Moon," IDC vice president David Reinsel has tried to illustrate the mind-boggling volumes. If 175 ZB of data were stored on today's largest hard drive (the largest SSD holds 100 TB), 1.75 billion such drives would be needed.

Still, Taylor Swift is not the only reason for growing data volumes. More broadly, the internet and the rapid growth in the number of internet users can be "blamed" for the growth in data volumes. It should be remembered here that every move made online means data.

Video apps swallow nearly three quarters of mobile data

Significant drivers of data volume are, naturally, the various video services and streaming platforms. Where the choice used to be limited to three TV channels, there are now hundreds of sources.

An international study published this January, which took into account only mobile data use, found that 71% of mobile data goes on video apps. Second came social networks, which accounted for only nine percent of global mobile data volume. These two categories may well overlap, however, since videos can be watched both through video apps and through social networks.

Sandvine's Global Internet Phenomena report for this year ranks the web applications that generate the most downstream internet traffic worldwide (that is, traffic from a central server to the user's device). It turns out that Netflix, the leader among streaming platforms, also triumphs in data volume, accounting for 14.9 percent of the whole world's downstream traffic. Transmitting high-definition video requires large amounts of data, and Netflix has more than 247.15 million subscribers (there may be even more viewers).

YouTube is not far behind, in second place after Netflix with 11.4 percent.

Besides streaming, large volumes of downstream traffic come from social media and gaming; the platforms noted include TikTok, Facebook, PlayStation and Xbox.

What about Estonia?

According to Tele2, private customers' internet data volume has risen 536%, nearly fivefold, in five years (compared with the same period in 2018) and is on a growth trend.

Tele2 confirms that private consumers use their smart devices more for everyday activities and pastimes (social media, video streaming) and the quality of the content consumed is of considerably larger volume (higher-resolution videos, better video games, more video calls and so on). Technological development, which has raised average mobile internet speeds, also plays a role.

The same trend can be seen in business customers' behaviour. According to Artur Praun, head of Elisa's business customer unit, usage volumes of data services are growing at a fast and steady pace. "According to data from the last three years, the data volumes consumed by business customers (in the mobile network) have grown a little over twofold. We see the increase in volumes both in smart devices and in office-based consumption," says Praun.

From the business customer's perspective, the head of Elisa's business customer unit highlights the popularity of remote work, which grows data volumes. "A good example is the migration of (mobile) calls and messages into various applications (apps). Above all it shows up as an increased volume of video calls (Teams, Zoom and so on)," says Praun.

According to Praun, besides the rapid growth in video calls there are other factors behind the increase in volumes: moving files of ever better quality and larger size (films, games, music, photos, work documents), increased consumption and streaming of interactive content, browsing on heavy websites, and the growing use of various (security) cameras (streaming and uploading camera images).

From the private consumer's perspective, Tele2 also points out that service packages have moved towards unlimited in recent years; solutions are distinguished by the volumes included in the package, the options outside Estonia and various value-added services. Where years ago there was a wide choice of packages with limited data volumes, today the choice is rather modest, because most consumers prefer an unlimited solution. For example, more than 70% of consumers choose an unlimited mobile plan, and for internet plans the share is over 90%.

Online shops collect incredible amounts of customer data

The move of commerce online has grown data volumes in the same way. E-commerce platforms such as Amazon, AliExpress and the like collect and store large amounts of data on customers' preferences, purchasing behaviour and delivery. Already a decade ago it was published that the US retail giant Walmart collects an estimated more than 2,500 terabytes of data from customer transactions every hour. After the coronavirus pandemic, online shopping has remained the preferred way for many.

In Estonia, 86% of residents actively shop online, the Estonian E-commerce Association reports from a recent study. Although nobody keeps count of the data volumes, it is known that last year e-commerce turnover in Estonia was 3.54 billion euros (according to Eesti Pank), which means growth of more than a billion euros, or 34%, compared with 2021. E-commerce already accounts for at least 20% of total retail volume.

As of June last year, around 7,700 online shops operate in Estonia. Compared with 2020 the number of local online shops has grown by nearly 2,000. This October Estonians ordered 1.26 million parcels to parcel lockers, nearly 21% and 160,000 parcels more than a year earlier. In the 10 months of the current year, parcel volume has grown by a total of 16%, the Estonian E-commerce Association reports. Naturally, data volumes grow along with these figures.

Machines generate more data than people

There are yet more reasons for growing data volumes. One keyword is IoT, the internet of things: an ever larger number of devices are connected to the internet, be it home automation, smart thermostats, health monitoring devices and so on. These devices constantly create and exchange information. According to Deloitte, the data volumes generated by machines and sensors are already in the majority.

Technology giants such as Meta, Amazon, Google and Microsoft are also significant contributors to growth. Organisations around the world increasingly use big data analytics to improve business models, understand customer behaviour and shape and implement marketing strategies (targeted advertising, for example).

We will not even start to unpack the topic of AI here.

These are only a few examples of how human behaviour and technological development increase data volumes around the world. The more people use digital services and smart devices, the more data is born.

How to cope with this amount of data?

"Since every bit or byte on the internet has to physically be somewhere, and as a rule that somewhere is a data center, the world needs correspondingly more capable and energy-efficient data centers," explains Toomas Kell, who is responsible for the daily operation of the largest such complex in the Baltics.

According to the market research firm Mordor Intelligence, data center construction worldwide amounted to 260 billion dollars (236.79 billion euros) last year, the equivalent of 14 Estonian state budgets. "The numbers really are large, and that makes it all the more important how these data centers are built and what their ecological footprint will be. Fortunately we clearly see a trend that, at least in Europe, the direction is towards energy efficiency and reliability," adds the head of operations at Greenergy Data Centers, whose target for power usage effectiveness is as much as 25% below the industry average.

That data volumes will keep growing is, he says, to some extent inevitable, because we have at our disposal technical devices that produce and apply information ever more efficiently. "In the data center business we do our best so that, besides Taylor Swift, there is a secure, energy-efficient and reliable place for every photo or video taken of her too," Kell adds half in jest. "In reality it is of course a challenge, and data center capacity has become a critically important resource in our digital societies," he concludes.