Ofcom’s annual Connected Nations report provides a wealth of information on the UK mobile market, but some areas lack fine detail. The contentious area of mobile data traffic growth rates is addressed in the report, but without a satisfactory conclusion. The topline information is that monthly mobile data traffic grew at a rate of approximately 18% year-on-year in 2025, broadly consistent with last year, rising from 1,069 PB to 1,257 PB. Ofcom gathers its data from the UK’s three MNOs (EE, VodafoneThree, and VMO2), based on stats collected in July 2025. This includes information on data volumes uploaded and downloaded in each mobile cell in the MNOs’ networks. Based on this data, 5G traffic accounted for approximately 28% of the…