Cisco has released the 11th annual Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast (2016 to 2021) that has forecast that by 2021, more members of the global population will be using mobile phones (5.5 billion) than bank accounts (5.4 billion), running water (5.3 billion), or landlines (2.9 billion). The IoT developments will mean an average of five mobile devices per capita which will mean nearly 12 billion mobile-connected devices.
Mobile data traffic will be 20% of total IP traffic (up from 8% in 2016) while speeds will increase from 6.9Mbps to 20.4Mbps by the end of the forecast.
Mobile video will increase 8.7-fold from 2016 to 2021 and will have the highest growth rate of any mobile application category. Mobile video will represent 78% of all mobile traffic by 2021. Live mobile video will grow 39-fold from 2016 to 2021. Live mobile video will represent 5% of total mobile video traffic by 2021.
Regionally, MEA will have the biggest growth (12X), APAC (7X), LATAM, CEE and WE (6X) while the US will grow by 5X.
Analyst Comment
Although there is a lot of hype around 5G, Cisco thinks that 5G will only account for 1.5% of global traffic by 2021, although users will be using a lot more data, 4.7 times more traffic than 4G or 10.7 times more traffic. (BR)
