2015 Cisco VNI Complete Forecast Update: Key Trends Include Mobility, M2M and Multimedia Content

Today, Cisco released the 10^th annual VNI Global IP Traffic and Service Adoption Forecasts for 2014 – 2019 (see media release). The primary drivers of global IP traffic growth continue to show increases that will create a greater global demand for IP network resources.

As a result of these fundamentals, we are projecting that global IP traffic will grow three-fold from 2014 to 2019 –reaching 2.0 Zettabytes annually by 2019 (a 23% CAGR over the forecast period).

While these projections and metrics are both interesting and important in terms of developing a macro-level understanding of the current and future global IP networking landscape, a deeper analysis reveals several key trends. A closer inspection of the forecast results provides the following valuable insights:

• How people and things are connecting to IP networks?
• What things that were previously unconnected are becoming connected?
• What type of content is being transported over IP networks?

Wireless Connectivity is the Preferred Access Type: By 2019, wired devices will account for just 19 percent of total global Internet traffic, while Wi-Fi and cellular-connected devices will account for 81 percent of Internet traffic (see figure below). Even in 2014, wired devices accounted for less than half of Internet traffic (39 percent). Globally, there will be nearly 341 million public Wi-Fi hotspots by 2018, up from 48 million hotspots in 2014, a sevenfold increase, according to a study conducted by iPass Inc. and Maravedis and Rethink.

The Number of IP M2M Connections will Triple over next Five Years: M2M connections will be the fastest-growing device/connection category in our forecast. M2M connections are expected to grow more than threefold during the forecast period, at 26 percent CAGR, reaching 10.5 billion connections by 2019 (up from 3.3 billion in 2014). For the first time, we’ve done specific projections on M2M growth by business and consumer verticals (see figure below). Connected home applications, such as home automation, home security and video surveillance, connected white goods, and tracking applications, will represent nearly half, of the total M2M connections by 2019. Connected healthcare, with applications such as health monitors, medicine dispensers, first-responder connectivity, and telemedicine, will be the fastest growing industry segment (49 percent CAGR).

Multimedia/Video Content Maintains Major Share of IP Traffic: The sum of all forms of IP video, which includes Internet video, IP VoD, video files exchanged through file sharing, video-streamed gaming, and videoconferencing, will continue to garner the largest share of total global IP traffic. Globally, IP video traffic will account for 80 percent of all IP traffic by 2019 (see figure below).

For more information and insights from the latest VNI study, I invite you to explore the following links:

• Watch Cisco’s VNI Forecast 2014-2019 Webcast featuring key findings and projections.
• The Cisco VNI Forecast Highlights Tool provides key forecast predictions that can be chosen on a global, regional or country level (these include device, traffic and network speed projections).
• The Cisco VNI Service Adoption Forecast Highlights Tool provides primary global and regional takeaways on user and subscriber, device and connection, and service adoption penetration rates.

Here is a summary of the highlights in video for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F60avGqyXXY

We hope our work and analysis can play a role in helping you shape your vision and plans for the future.

Tweet us @CiscoVNI if you have any questions.