This paper aims to address the high energy consumption of existing machine learning models in efficiently processing and predicting rapidly increasing mobile data. To this end, we studied mobile traffic prediction using energy-efficient, bio-inspired models, Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) and Echo State Networks (ESNs). Using data from three Barcelona locations, we compared and analyzed the predictive performance and energy consumption of SNNs, ESNs, CNNs, and MLPs. We also evaluated their performance and energy efficiency in centralized and distributed (federated) environments. Our results demonstrate that SNNs and ESNs can significantly reduce energy consumption while maintaining prediction accuracy comparable to existing models, demonstrating particularly high energy efficiency in distributed environments. This suggests the potential of bio-inspired models for sustainable and privacy-preserving mobile traffic prediction.