In addition to more mobile users, 'smart' devices and M2M connections, video is driving the growth in mobile data traffic. Cisco expects over 75 percent of the world's mobile data traffic will be video by 2020. The demand for higher video resolution, more bandwidth and processing speed also will increase the use of 4G devices with faster speeds, Cisco said. 4G data use is expected to surpass 2G by 2018 and 3G by 2020, and 4G will represent more than 70 percent of all mobile traffic by the end of forecast period, compared to 47 percent last year.
At the same, Cisco expects the share of mobile data traffic offloaded to fixed networks to increase, from 51 percent of total traffic in 2020 to 55 percent in 2020. This will drive a seven-fold increase in Wi-Fi hotspots, including home spots, to 432 million in 2020 from 64 million in 2015. Already in 2015, monthly Wi-Fi offload traffic (3.9 exabytes) exceeded monthly mobile/cellular traffic (3.7 exabytes) for the first time. By 2020, 38.1 exabytes Wi-Fi offload traffic will be generated each month, continuing to exceed monthly mobile/cellular traffic (30.6 exabytes).
The growing number of hotspots and improving Wi-Fi technology will also lead to a strong increase in voice over Wi-Fi services. VoWi-Fi is expected to exceed VoLTE this year already in terms of number of minutes per year and is estimated to surpass VoIP in 2018. By 2020, voice over Wi-Fi minutes will account for over half (53%) of all mobile IP voice traffic.
