Cisco's Digital Home IP Traffic Index By Regions

Cisco thinks that Global IP Traffic will increase more than fourfold by 2014, and that the growth in traffic will continue to be dominated by video, exceeding 91 percent of global consumer IP traffic by 2014. Improvements in network bandwidth capacity and Internet speeds, along with the increasing popularity of HDTV, 3DTV and video streaming websites are key factors expecting to quadruple IP traffic from 2009 to 2014. They have also made their prediction tool available for us to make our own predictions. So I went over to have a look to see what information it could give me with regards to consumer traffic across the different regions/countries.

North America (USA and Canada)
America and Canada Cable VoD (Video on Demand) last year was 1668.8PB. This year it is estimated to be 2214.2PB and for 2014 it is expected to be 5641.8PB an increase of 3975PB which is twice the amount of 2010.  Another area which is predicted to see high growth is internet video, when comparing 2009 (891.1PB) with 2014 (4375.4PB).  Other areas show growth but not as much as Cable VoD and internet video.

Middle East and Africa
The biggest growth area in this region will be internet video last year 2009 it was 9P for 2010 its 22PB this has already doubled for 2014 it will be 342.6PB this is an increase of 3806% when compared with 2009  All other area shows increase but not as high as internet video.  I would put this down to the popularity of YouTube and other online video websites.

Latin America (Brazil Mexico and the rest of LATAM)
For this region three areas show significant growth: file sharing, internet video and web data.  Comparing 2009 to 2014, in 2014 internet-video to TV will be 164 times what it is in 2009.  File sharing will be four times what it is in 2009.

Central and Eastern Europe (Russia and rest of CEE)
This region shows significant growth in file sharing and internet video, file sharing being the higher of the two.  Internet-video to TV in this region is expected to start growing at a faster rate starting in 2012.

Western Europe (France, UK, Italy, Germany and rest of WE)
For the Western Europe region all areas show a steady growth over the next five years. Video Calling is predicted to grow faster over the next three – four years.  Internet Video and file sharing is shown as the biggest growth area, with Internet video being the bigger of the two.

Asia Pacific (Korea, China, India, Japan and rest of APAC)
In 2014 the amount of mobile data going through the communication network in this region will be much more than it is today – 61.1PB compared to 925.6PB.  Internet video in 2014 will be six times higher than it was in 2009. Another big growth area is file sharing; in 2014 it is expected to be about four times what it is today.

I agree with Cisco’s predictions and think that as homes buy more digital devices and become more connected the consumption of digital media will increase. I also think that in reality the data rate can surpass the data rate predicted if the telecom infrastructure is upgraded faster than expected, especially in Asia Pacific – certain area, Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean.