ABI Research has estimated that the total annual global volume of internet data traffic will reach 8,000 PetaBytes in 2011 and grow by a staggering Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 50% over the following years to top 60,000 PetaBytes in 2016!

The startling surge, which will peak at +58% next year (2012) before ever so slightly slowing down, is unsurprisingly being driven by accelerated demand for broadband video and television (IPTV) services (e.g. YouTube, BT-Vision etc.). ABI expects online video and TV streaming to surpass ordinary Internet and web traffic during 2015.

To put that in perspective, 1 PetaByte is equal to 1,000,000,000 MegaBytes or 1,000,000 GigaBytes. By comparison a single average MP3 music file/track might be anything from 3 to 5 MegaBytes in size.