Mobile backhaul equipment investments jumped a healthy 19 per cent in 2008 to US$4.6 billion worldwide, and revenue is set to explode over the next 5 years and beyond, claims Infonetics Research. The report also said the most quickly changing technologies between 2008 and 2013 are Ethernet microwave and Ethernet copper and fibre. In all the major world regions, operators will gradually shift to Ethernet backhaul, although it will be a slower shift in Asia Pacific and Central/Latin America, as a higher proportion of overall mobile traffic remains voice for a longer period. "Data usage on mobile networks is causing a traffic explosion on backhaul networks, exacerbated by the popularity of bandwidth-hungry mobile phone applications. An AT&T executive this month said 50 per cent of the data traffic on AT&T's mobile backhaul network is iPhone-generated, despite the fact that only a few million of their 78 million cellular subscribers are iPhone users," said Michael Howard, of Infonetics Research. Article