On a recent train journey to London, I found myself shoe-horned into a fully booked quiet coach. When I pulled out my usual travelling companions – iPhone and Blackberry – I thought I would be greeted by looks of disdain or at the very least some ssshhhing. However, this wasn’t the case and when I looked around I began to see why. The carriage was full of people with laptops and 3G dongles, iPads and some with the Holy Trinity of smartphones: iPhone, Android and Blackberry. All around people were engaged in a flurry of emails, tweets, status updates, location check-ins and other app-based activities.

Although I spend a great deal of my time discussing the development of mobile broadband and its impact on the world’s networks, it’s very rare that I see such a concentrated example of the service in use. This thought was brought to the front of my mind today when I saw this infographic (see left). This graphic highlights the geosocial universe and most critically the proportion of each platform accessed via a mobile device. Even a cursory glance at this information shows the impact mobile broadband is having on the way we communicate and access services. This is particularly true when we consider that nearly half of Facebook’s 500 million users access the site through a mobile device. This means mobile gaming, mobile uploads of images and videos, mobile messaging and one can anticipate that in the near future that Facebook may also develop some form of video conferencing service.

Although the move towards mobile connectivity is nothing new and is critical in the move to rollout connectivity in both developed and developing nations the figures continue to impress. This is underlined in Ofcom’s recent Communication’s Market report that reveals a 240% increase in the UK’s mobile data volumes in 2009 when compared to 2007. The report goes on to note that in 2009, 13.5 million people surfed the web via their phones. A figure that has almost tripled since 2008.

Aside from the impact on the networking infrastructure to support this dramatic increase in mobile data, it’s also important to consider the cultural significance of this. In the mobile universe, the demand for data is increasing at the same pace as the demand for voice is decreasing. Om Malik highlighted this trend in a recent Gigaom article, where he discussed the move from voice to data and how we no longer talk anymore.

I can certainly see this trend with myself. How many times do I tweet someone as opposed to calling them? The answer is higher than I care to imagine.

However, I’m hoping that soon this trend will come full circle. In an earlier blog post, I discussed if video would soon become the new voice. Gigaom seem to believe so and are predicting 30 billion video calls by 2015. The iPhone 4 and the rollout of true mobile VoIP solutions are enabling this development. The big question is what the impact will be on the cellular networks when VoIP services move from WiFi connections.

There is one important side-effect of mass mobile video conferencing that I need to consider though and that’s what will my neighbours on the quiet coach say when I pull out the latest iPhone for a video conference with my extended family.

How has the mobile changed your life and communication patterns? Do you talk less and tweet more?

Read more on the challenges of mobile backhaul here.