Cisco's latest Visual Networking Index (VNI) forecast predicts that global internet data traffic will exceed 767 Exabytes by 2014, which compares with an annual run rate of 176 Exabytes in 2009 when IP traffic grew by 45% in the year. Online video and High Definition TV services are expected to dominate this growth. Indeed the average monthly traffic in 2014 will be equivalent to 32 million people streaming Avatar (2009 Film) in 3D, continuously for the entire month.

Global internet video traffic will even surpass file sharing / peer-to-peer (P2P) services by the end of 2010. P2P will continue to grow in volume but decline as a percentage of overall IP traffic. The following graph should give you a fairly good idea of just how aggressive this growth will be across the most dominant internet service types.


Globally, mobile data ( Mobile Broadband ) traffic will also double every year through 2014, increasing 39 times between 2009 and 2014. Mobile data traffic will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 108% between 2009 and 2014, reaching 3.6 Exabytes per month in 2014.
Almost 66% of the world's mobile data traffic will be video by 2014.

It's estimated that the UK alone will be home to 46,441,504 "Internet Video Users" by 2014, which is up from 36,788,000 in 2009. That might be hard to believe given that we currently have barely 18-19m fixed line broadband subscribers, although it's important to stress that Cisco doesn't just factor in home and fixed telephone line internet users.


In short. Come 2014 the Internet will be four times larger than it was in 2009. By year-end 2014, the equivalent of 12 billion DVDs will cross the Internet each month. This growth will naturally be boosted by the uptake of ever faster broadband ISP connections around the world and related consumer demand for higher quality media.

UK consumers take note. Some ISPs are already predicting that this rise in consumption could well result in higher prices or possibly even a more restrictive internet experience. All that data doesn't come free and somebody will have to pay for it. Check out our article on this yesterday - here.

Cisco Visual Networking Index 2009-2014 (PDF)
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/white_paper_c11-481360.pdf