Worldwide mobile traffic will increase 26-fold by 2015, and most of that will be video. That’s the projection of Cisco Systems’ new Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast, released Tuesday.
The study found that the traffic increase represents an annual growth rate of 92 percent over the period. Two major factors are driving the huge traffic boom — the surge in sales of tablets and smartphones, and a resulting “widespread mobile video content consumption.”
10-Fold Increase in Speed
By 2015, the study predicts, there will be more than 5.6 billion personal devices connected to mobile networks. As the world’s population is expected to be 7.2 billion people by that time, the projection indicates the number of mobile units will be approaching one device for every human on Earth. In terms of mobile connections, the number will nearly equal the world’s population, with 7.1 billion connections to mobile devices and machine-to-machine nodes, excluding Wi-Fi connections.
According to the study, mobile video will represent 66 percent of all mobile traffic by 2015. The highest growth rate of any device will be a 205-fold increase in traffic from tablets.
Currently, the average mobile connection accounts for about 65 megabytes of traffic each month, but by 2015 that will increase to about 1,118 megabytes monthly.
To handle all that traffic, the average mobile connection speed is expected to increase 10-fold by 2015, to 2.22 megabits. For smartphones only, the average connection speed will be 4.4 megabits.
By 2015, annual global mobile traffic will be 6.3 exabytes each month, for an annual total of 75 exabytes — the equivalent of 19 billion DVDs. This will be about 75 times the amount of global, Internet Protocol-based traffic — both fixed and mobile — that existed on the planet in the year 2000.
Cisco Projections ‘Realistic’
The surge has already begun in earnest. From calendar…