"We are already seeing that today: whereby 3 here in the U.K are saying that if you take out a contract with us we'll also throw in mobile broadband at a 50 percent discount," said Pescatore.

Mobile broadband will weather the current economic storm, with growth and data-integration plans continuing, according to Pescatore.

For the mobile data operators both browsing on mobile devices and laptop connectivity will become an even more important source of revenue. "We have already seen this year how much of an impact that it's making on total revenue, and this will continue next year given the fact that voice connections are very much saturated, and there aren't many users to connect," said Pescatore.

Laptops will generate a majority of the traffic on a per user basis, but mobile phones will also be an important traffic generator. There are many more phones than laptops in circulation and data browsing from phones will continue to increase for a number of reasons. The industry has only skimmed the surface of what can be done with social networking on the phone, according to Pescatore.

"Social networking will continue to whet consumer appetite for data moving forward and we'll see a lot more collaboration between carriers and social networking sites, as well as social networking sites and device manufacturers," said Pescatore.