In 2010, all signs point to record numbers of consumers using mobile devices, from smartphones to e-readers. With Apple’s release of the iPad, it is clear that the applicability of the mobile device is going to continue to cross boundaries between personal and professional use, from email to video viewing and beyond.

CNET reported last week that Cisco announced the results from its Global Mobile Data Forecast with their researchers predicting that by 2014 mobile data traffic globally will reach 3.6 exabytes per month, a 39-fold increase from 2009 to 2014 and equal to roughly about 1 billion DVDs – this is really no surprise to anyone!

As increasing numbers of users use data-heavy phones, mobile carriers face the challenge of supporting the overwhelming amount of data traffic. AT&T, which said that its network traffic grew 200 percent in 2009, has possibly suffered the most as it has struggled to support the iPhone, the demand for which continues to increase (the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple sold 8.7 million iPhones in the fourth quarter of 2009, an 18% increase from the 3rd quarter). And as we have discussed previously AT&T plans to invest $2 billion to upgrade its network in 2010.

While of course mobile carriers are attempting to rectify these issues by building additional network capacity, I believe carriers need to consider less costly alternatives to make up for the fact that traditional 3G and even 4G technology will unlikely to be able to catch up and properly support mobile devices.

One option for carriers we are hearing a lot of hype about is mobile offloading, a process where carriers literally offload their extra data onto WiFi and Femtocell networks. I believe this is actually a a cheaper and even more powerful alternative to building out a new infrastructure.

CNET’s Maggie Reardon and I have an interesting discussion about mobile offload options in her article “Wi-Fi Rides to Wireless Networks’ Rescue.”

At Towerstream, we’re keeping our eye on how carriers (both traditional and even some non traditional / Google perhaps) will support the growing base of mobile data users, because its clear that humans love their mobile devices and the applications and ingenuity behind these devices are far-reaching.

Finally, today is the first day of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and already this morning I have seen some very interesting announcements coming out on multiple fronts.  We will watch the conference closely the next few days and report our findings and opinions in my next blog post.