HELSINKI , FINLAND: Global mobile data traffic through Internet browser firm Opera's mobile portal rose in January by 18 percent on the previous month, the fastest pace of growth since May 2008, Opera said on Wednesday.

Wireless operators are keen on raising revenue from Internet browsing and the social networking boom as revenue from traditional voice calls is declining.

Data traffic on mobile operators' networks rose on average 4.7 times last year, with some operators seeing traffic surge more than 10 times, boosted by the uptake of wireless data cards in laptops, according to telecoms equipment firm Nokia Siemens.

Nokia Siemens and rivals Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent, who have suffered over the last few years from aggressive pricing from Asian rivals like Huawei, are also looking for rising data traffic as a lead into new orders.

Opera has 20 million users of its Opera Mini browser who all access the Internet through Opera's servers and who generated more than 122 million megabytes of data traffic for operators worldwide in January.

Opera said Facebook and other social networking services were one of the key traffic generators.

The majority of visits to such online communities are still made by people sitting at a computer telling their friends where they are and how they are feeling, exchanging opinions on their favourite movies and music or uploading videos.

But the spontaneous and personal nature of much of that communication is proving to lend itself perfectly to the mobile phone.

Last week at the Mobile World Congress trade show INQ, a spin-off of Hutchison Whampoa's 3, won the handset of the year award as the firm's first phone promises easier social network access at a low price.

Frank Meehan, INQ's chief executive, said consumers are prepared to go without the latest bells and whistles on mobile phones in the current economy but they want to keep using Facebook.

"We can see this as an operator -- Facebook is massive," Meehan said.