The growing number of connected devices and internet users will lead to a quadrupling in internet traffic by 2015, according to research by Cisco. The latest Cisco Visual Networking Index predicts that the number of network-connected devices will be more than 15 billion, or twice the world's population, by 2015. PCs will fall to 87 percent of internet traffic by 2015, due to the growing adoption of tablets, smartphones and connected TVs. Web-enabled TVs alone will account for an estimated 10 percent of global consumer internet traffic and 18 percent of internet video traffic in 2015. Overall worldwide internet traffic is expected to reach 966 exabytes per year in 2015, rising in that year alone by 200 exabytes, or more than all the global internet traffic in 2010. Monthly traffic will go from 20.2 exabytes in 2010 to 80.5 exabytes per month in 2015. Mobile broadband will account for an estimated 75 exabytes in 2015, increasing 26 times from 2010 to 2015 to 6.3 exabytes per month. Cisco cited four factors for the increased traffic: the increasing number of devices, the growing number of internet users (estimated at almost 3 billion in 2015, or more than 40 percent of the world's projected population), faster broadband (average fixed broadband speed projected to increase four-fold to 28Mbps in 2015), and more video use (1 million video minutes per second traversing the internet in 2015). The Cisco forecast is based on actual traffic data provided voluntarily by global service providers and consumers and is also available on a regional and country level.
