Network tech giant Cisco has released its latest Visual Networking Index (VNI) Mobile Forecast report, which claims that the huge surge in mobile users, smart devices, mobile video, and 4G networks will cause mobile data traffic to increase eight-fold over the next five years.
The VNI reports that mobile video will be the largest driving factor for the future surge in mobile data traffic – with 4G usage set to increase as consumers and business crave more bandwidth, higher video resolution, and enhanced processing speed. Cisco forecasts the 4G connectivity share to overtake 2G by 2018, and 3G by 2020.
Cisco claims that more than 75% of global mobile data traffic will be video by 2020, up from 72% by 2019. It also forecasts an annual run rate of 366.8 exabytes of mobile data traffic by 2020 – which it says is equivalent to 7 trillion video clips – more than 2.5 daily video clips per person on earth for a year. Smart mobile devices and connections (minimum of 3G connectivity) are forecast to make up 72% of total mobile devices and connections by 2020, which stood at 36% in 2015.
Figures project there will be 5.4 billion people with mobile phones by 2020, which will be more than people with electricity (5.3 billion), running water (3.5 billion) and cars (2.8 billion). Wearable devices are set to reach a volume of more than 600 million by 2020, and M2M connections (including wearables) will represent 26.4% of mobile-connected devices by 2020, up from 7.7% in 2015.
By region, the Middle East and Africa is set to experience the largest regional mobile data traffic growth rate by 2020, increasing 15-fold in the five-year period, Asia Pacific will increase 9-fold, Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America 8-fold, and Western Europe and North America 6-fold, according to the VNI.
“With the ever-increasing billions of people and things that are being connected, mobility is the predominant medium that’s enabling today’s global digitization transformation,” said Doug Webster, vice president of service provider marketing, Cisco. “Future mobile innovations in cellular, such as 5G, and WiFi solutions will be needed to further address new scale requirements, security concerns, and user demands. IoT advancements will continue to fuel tangible benefits for people, businesses, and societies.”