Video consumption is growing at an impressive rate; so much so that within the next three years it will account for nearly four-fifths of all mobile traffic, according to Cisco’s latest Visual Networking Index.
Cisco forecasts 79% of global mobile data traffic will be video by 2022. That’s up from 59% in 2017, or a ninefold increase.
Mobile video will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 55% between 2017 and 2022, while overall average mobile traffic will increase at a CAGR of 46%. Of the 77 exabytes per month crossing the mobile network by 2022, nearly 61 exabytes will be due to video, according to the study.
“One consequence of the growth of video in both fixed and mobile contexts is the resulting acceleration of busy-hour traffic in relation to average traffic growth. Video usage tends to occur during evening hours and has a ‘prime time,’ unlike general web usage that occurs throughout the day. As a result, more video usage means more traffic during the peak hours of the day,” Cisco wrote in the study.
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Cisco is also forecasting mobile network traffic spikes related to more augmented and virtual reality content and applications on smartphones and other mobile devices. The company said that bandwidth and latency requirements will become increasingly imperative for a high-quality VR and AR experience. Globally, AR and VR traffic will grow nearly 12-fold from 22 petabytes per month in 2017, to 254 petabytes per month in 2022.
“This is a tremendous opportunity for service providers to jump in at and provide their distribution and GTM (Go To Market) muscle to further drive the adoption of VR and AR. VR and AR ecosystems are just forming now, Service providers can catch some of these early developments and gain significantly by owning or helping develop some of the AR and VR ecosystems that will ultimately drive their network connectivity offerings,” Cisco wrote in the study.