Cisco Predicts UK Fixed Broadband Speeds to Average 50Mbps by 2019

Cisco has published its annual 2015 Visual Networking Index (VNI) forecast, which reveals that world Internet traffic has grown to reach 59,851 PetaBytes (PB) per month and could hit 167,973PB by 2019. Meanwhile average fixed broadband speeds in the UK are currently 23.2Mbps and should rise to 50Mbps by 2019.

It’s worth pointing out that the current global figure of 59,851 PetaBytes (monthly) for all types of Internet traffic breaks down to 47,743PB for consumer traffic and 12,108PB for business traffic. Similarly fixed line Internet connections continue to dominate the picture (39,912PB), while “Managed IP” networks gobbled 17,424PB and mobile held just 2,514PB.

Meanwhile mobile data traffic is now rising at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 57% versus just 23% for the more mature fixed line market, although even at that rate by 2019 mobile will still only account for 24,221PB per month and at the same time fixed lines will be gobbling 111,894PB.

Just to put all of this into perspective, a humble 8Mbps (Megabits per second) broadband line can also be converted to read as 1MBps (MegaBytes per second) and it then takes around 1000 MegaBytes to equal a GigaByte. After that it goes a little like this.. and yes it’s an awful lot of data!

1000 GigaBytes = 1 Terabyte
1000 TeraBytes = 1 PetaByte
1000 PetaBytes = 1 ExaByte
1000 ExaBytes = 1 ZettaByte

The results mean that annual global IP traffic will surpass the ZettaByte (1000 ExaBytes) threshold in 2016, and the two ZettaByte threshold in 2019. However, in terms of consumer Internet traffic, it will come as no surprise to find that 64% (21,624PB per year) of it is currently being generated by the streaming or downloading of online video content and that’s expected to hit a staggering 80% by 2019.

The report also includes predictions for broadband speeds, which are always somewhat subject to the availability and adoption of faster connectivity solutions. At present Cisco claims that the global average fixed broadband speed is 20.3Mbps and they predict that this will rise to 43Mbps by 2019. By comparison the UK currently records as 23.2Mbps and will jump to 50Mbps over the same period.

But it’s a more subdued outcome for Mobile Broadband connectivity, which is currently reported to deliver an average global speed of 1.68Mbps and this is only predicted to reach 3.96Mbps by 2019. Similarly UK mobile connections are currently estimated to deliver 2.52Mbps and this will rise to 4.37Mbps by 2019, which seems quite low compared to some other reports we’ve read.

Never the less it’s important to take Cisco’s report with a huge pinch of salt because their future predictions, especially those that go past the two+ year mark, can end up being quite wide of the mark. For example, back in 2013 Cisco predicted that the total Consumer Internet traffic for right now would be 41,429PB per month and yet the actual figure is 33,598PB.

Cisco’s Visual Networking Index 2015-2019
http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/sp/vni/..