After a decade of remarkable growth, the international Internet is showing substantial signs of maturity. According to TeleGeography's latest survey of Internet backbone providers, global cross-border internet traffic grew by just 49 percent in 2005, down from 103 percent in 2004. The Internet's fastest growing regions, Asia (76%) and Latin America (70%), produced only modest traffic growth by previous years' standards.
The rate of traffic growth going forward may hinge most on the underlying growth in broadband subscribers, which has begun to slow in many developed markets. As of mid-2005, the combined average traffic on all cross-border backbone routes stood at just under 1 Terabit per second (Tbps). TeleGeography projects that average traffic will range from 2 to 3 Terabits per second by 2008.
An important secondary sign of market maturity is stabilization in Internet backbone access pricing. TeleGeography's latest pricing survey shows that in the 12 months up to mid-2005, prices fell less sharply than in previous years. In 2004, backbone access prices around the world fell about 50 percent over the previous year. This year prices fell between 23 and 33 percent, and many providers have stated that they have no plans to reduce prices further.
