Mobile traffic to hit 18 exabytes per month by 2018 - Cisco

Global mobile data traffic is set to grow 11-fold in the period covering 2013 to 2018, a Combined Annual Growth Rate of 61 percent, reaching 18 exabytes per month, or 190 exabytes a year, according to Cisco’s annual Visual Networking Index for mobile data. With an exabyte representing 1 quintillion bytes, 190 exabytes is roughly equivalent to 42 trillion images, or 14 images shared daily by every person on the planet. The actual number of mobile users will increase by 4.1 billion in 2013 to 4.9 billion by 2018, while the number of devices consuming mobile data will surpass 10 billion by 2018. Of those devices 8 billion will be consumer devices and the other 2 billion will be M2M connections, though consumer devices such as tablets, smartphones and laptops will generate 94 percent of all mobile traffic by 2018.

Looking at traffic by device type, 62 percent of mobile data traffic in 2013 was generated by smartphones, with Cisco forecasting that figure to increase to 66 percent by 2018. Tablets are set to grow from 9 percent of global data traffic in 2013 to 18 percent by 2018, while laptop mobile data is expected to go the other way, decreasing from 25 percent in 2013 to only 9 percent by 2018.

In 2018 all mobile devices will be connecting at almost double today’s speeds, with the average global mobile network speed expected to be 2.5 Mbps, up from 1.4 in 2013. Increased adoption of 4G technology will be the key to higher speeds. While only 2.9 percent of all mobile connections in 2013 supported 4G, the figure will grow to 15 percent by 2018. In terms of traffic, Cisco is forecasting a 78 percent CAGR for 4G traffic, up from 448 petabytes a month in 2013 to 8 exabytes per month in 2018.

Video is expected to account for 69 percent of all mobile data traffic by 2018, up from 53 percent in 2013, with streaming audio declining from 14 percent to 11 percent of mobile traffic over the same period.

Finally, in terms of regions, Cisco expects the Middle East and Africa to have the strongest mobile data traffic growth of any region at 70 percent CAGR between 2013-2018, followed by Central and Eastern Europe at 68 percent, Asia Pacific at 67 percent, Latin America at 66 percent and Western Europe and North America at 50 percent each.