IP Traffic Growing Fastest in Africa, Asia

IP traffic is growing fastest in the Middle East and Africa, followed by the Asia Pacific region.

Traffic in the Middle East and Africa will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 41 percent between 2015 and 2020, while IP traffic in Asia Pacific will grow at a CAGR of 22 percent.

IP traffic in North America will grow at a CAGR of 19 percent, while IP traffic in Western Europe will grow at a CAGR of 20 percent.

IP traffic in Latin America will grow at a CAGR of 21 percent, while IP traffic in Central and Eastern Europe will grow at a CAGR of 27 percent.

Traffic from wireless and mobile devices will account for 66 percent of total IP traffic by 2020, says Cisco.

In 2015, wired devices accounted for the majority of IP traffic at 52 percent.

Also, by 2020, global fixed broadband speeds will reach 47.7 Mbps, up from 24.7 Mbps in 2015. In other words, typical global fixed network speeds will double in five years. Some providers (most notably Comcast), in some markets, have been able to double speeds about every two years, since the dial-up era began.

The point is that creating more restrictions on suppliers, rather than removing barriers, in such a fast-changing market continues to strike some as unhelpful.

And though mobile Internet access is not the only platform people will use, mobile data traffic will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 53 percent between 2015 and 2020.

By way of comparison, global mobile data traffic will grow three times as fast as fixed IP traffic from 2015 to 2020. On the other hand, fixed networks will continue to represent most of the transferred bits.

Global mobile data traffic was five percent of total IP traffic in 2015, and will be 16 percent of total IP traffic by 2020.