Cisco has published the latest edition of the Cisco Visual Networking Index, forecasting global IP traffic to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22 percent over the next five years as more than one billion new Internet users grow the global Internet community from three billion in 2015 to 4.1 billion by 2020.
However the adoption of personal devices and deployment of machine-to-machine (M2M) connections will have an even greater impact on traffic growth, Cisco says. 'Over the next five years, global IP networks will support up to 10 billion new devices and connections, increasing from 16.3 billion in 2015 to 26.3 billion by 2020. There are projected to be 3.4 devices and connections per capita by 2020 -- up from 2.2 per capita in 2015.'
Globally Cisco expects M2M connections to grow nearly three-fold from 4.9 billion in 2015 to 12.2 billion by 2020, representing 46 percent of total connected devices. The connected health consumer segment will have the fastest growth (five-fold) of M2M connections from 2015 (144 million) to 2020 (729 million). The connected home segment will have the largest volume of M2M connections over the forecast period with 2.4 billion in 2015, growing to 5.8 billion by 2020 nearly half of all M2M connections.
Cisco expects video to account for 79 percent of global Internet traffic by 2020 -- up from 63 percent in 2015. 'The world will reach three trillion Internet video minutes per month by 2020, which is five million years of video per month, or about one million video minutes every second,' it says. HD and Ultra HD Internet video will make up 82 percent of Internet video traffic by 2020 -- up from 53 percent in 2015.
In 2015, Wi-Fi and mobile-connected devices generated 62 percent of Internet traffic (Wi-Fi: 55 percent; cellular: 7 percent; fixed: 38 percent). By 2020, Wi-Fi and mobile-connected devices will generate 78 percent of Internet traffic (Wi-Fi: 59 percent; cellular: 19 percent; fixed: 22 percent).