The addition of 1 billion new users and 10 billion new connected devices will triple the amount of data being passed through the Internet by 2020, Cisco predicts.
In its latest Cisco Visual Network Index, released today, the networking vendor says traffic will continue to expand at a compound annual growth rate from 2015 to 2020.
The sheer growth in data consumption is astounding — especially for operators of cable networks, which will be delivering much of this traffic.
In 2015, global Internet traffic averaged 72.5 exabytes per month. That traffic average is expected to grow to 194.4 exabytes by 2020. An exabyte is one quintillion bytes.
A big driver will be the Internet of Things (IoT) — or so-called machine to machine connections (M2M) with video surveillance, smart meters, digital health monitors and over devices connections increasing from 4.9 billion in 2015 to a predicted 12.5 billion by 2020.
Online and mobile video usage is another big driver. Cisco predicts that Internet video will account for 79 percent of global traffic by 2020 — up from 63 percent in 2015 — with HD and UltraHD video making up 82 percent of digital video traffic.
Worldwide, online and mobile viewers will consume three trillion minutes of Internet video per month by 2020, Cisco adds.
For more:
- read this Cisco press release
Related articles:
Cisco's Q3 switching, routing revenues dip on softer service provider spending
Arris, Cisco and Casa: The top broadband equipment vendors in cable
Jarich: Huawei + Nokia + Ericsson/Cisco = Who's left to drive network transformation?