Global Mobile Data Traffic Will Grow 13 Times More in Five Years, Cisco Predicts

The UCStrategies news story on February 7 indicated one of the key findings of a study by Cisco Systems, Inc. regarding the eventual surge of mobile traffic in the form of video. In Cisco's white paper dubbed as "Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2012-2017," the company predicts that from 2012 to 2017, worldwide mobile data traffic will grow 13 times over. Moreover, by 2015, tablets will go beyond 10 percent of the global mobile data traffic.

According to Cisco's study, the forecast period 2012 to 2017 will see the following key trends in the world's global mobile data traffic:

• From 4.3 billion in 2012, the number of mobile users will grow to 5.2 billion by 2017.
  
  
• From 7 billion mobile devices and M2M connections in 2012, the number of mobile devices and connections is expected to grow to more than 10 billion by 2017. Ninety-three percent of mobile traffic will come from smartphones, laptops, and tablets.
  
  
• From the average global mobile network speed of 0.5 Mbps in 2012, Cisco predicts a seven-fold speed increase of 3.9 Mbps by 2017.
  
  
• By 2017, the average connection speed for smartphones will be 6.5 Mbps, a speed which, according to Channelnomics' Dave Courbanou, may mean, for some cloud service providers, a more habitual and frequent use of cloud services by customers.
  
  
• By 2017, around 50 percent of the world's mobile traffic will be carried by either Wi-Fi or hard lines.
  
  
• From 51 percent in 2012, mobile video traffic will represent 66 percent or two-thirds of the world's mobile data traffic by 2017.

"With such dramatic adoption, we are rapidly approaching the time when nearly every network experience will be a mobile one and, more often than not, a visual one as well," said Doug Webster, vice president of Service Provider Networking Marketing at Cisco. "This trend is a result of the seemingly insatiable demand by consumers and businesses alike to achieve the benefits gained when connecting people, data, and things in an Internet of Everything."

Channelnomics' Courbanou, lending insight on the findings of Cisco's study, said that although an opportunity presents itself, channel partners are still supposed to "reach out and grab it." He said that the study offers a reason to examine present business models in order to find "breathing room to adopt next-generation strategies and technologies." Courbanou finally concluded, "It's a small first step that can open more doors and preparing for the mobile revolution today will avoid costly catch up in the future." (KOM) Link. Link. Link. Link.