Forecast of Cisco: The 966th exabyte of traffic by 2015

Global Internet traffic in 2015 will reach the 966th exabyte, and 15 billion devices, approximately on two on each person in the world will be connected to network, Cisco in the new forecast reports Visual Networking Index Forecast.

The average resident of the USA in 2015 will have seven network devices, Suraj Shetty, the vice president of Cisco for global marketing foretold. In 2010 there was about one attached device on each person on the planet.

Cisco considers, traffic on the Internet will increase by the 200th exabyte ^[1] between 2014 and 2015 that is ten times higher, than monthly global traffic in 2010 (20.2 exabyte).

Growth of traffic, substantially, will be caused by online video and new devices, such as tablets, Shetti told. During 2015 1 million minutes of video, on average, will be transferred every second to the Internet, Cisco in the report predicts.

In 2015 about 6% of all Internet traffic will generate tablets, and it means that their traffic will be more, than at all attached devices in 2006, Shetti considers.

According to Cisco, in 2015 the Wi-Fi-traffic connecting devices, including tablets, will exceed the fixed broadband traffic.

It is already the fifth release of a research of Internet traffic from Cisco. Producers of network equipment underestimated Internet traffic trends in the previous reports a little, Shetti told. Growth of traffic and the connected devices will have huge effects for suppliers of network services and managerial policy, the group of experts on Cisco action in Washington reported.

Cisco predicts that the speed of broadband access in the world will increase from 7 Mbit to 28 Mbps, but Carlos Rodriguez, the manager on legislative activity of Telefónica USA company, considers that increase in speed will depend on several factors. Clients demand bigger capacity, and income of many telecom operators was flat or decreased.

"We cannot receive investment... as presented, - he told. - There is a risk that at some point expenses will exceed income". If it occurs, operators can reduce investments into acceleration of networks, Rodriguez added. Telecom operators, perhaps, will need to study multiple models of pricing and new types of commercial agreements to correspond to demand.

Blair Levin (Blair Levin), the research associate on communication systems of Aspen Institute, called forecasts of Cisco "terrible". "Actually we thought that crisis of a range will be before emergence of tablets", Levin who directed the national broadband plan of the Federal Commission on Communication of the USA (FCC) issued in March, 2010 told.

In the report it is noted that the USA and other countries need to find out the best methods of redistribution of a range for use of broadband communication, Levin told. Almost all useful range is already distributed. "Our present technique - we wait for crisis, and the government just returns back it", - he told.

According to the forecast of Cisco, in 2015 broadband mobile traffic will 26-multiply exceed values of 2010.

One of critics called into question the report of Cisco and use of its FCC in the course of development of political recommendations. Steve Crowley, the consulting engineer, called the report of Cisco of "sale of the brochure". "There are intersections between people who prepare the forecast and the people responsible for marketing of a line of the equipment of Cisco networks for suppliers of services, - he writes in the blog. - The forecast is used to help with sale of this equipment".

The report is absolutely normal as the document of sales, but politicians should consider how interest in sale of the equipment can influence the forecast, he told. Two independent research firms were more conservative in the forecasts concerning traffic of the last years, Crowley noted.

"Every time when case concerns sales, whatever range of statements was heard, look in a source", he writes.

^[1] The exabyte is equal to one trillion bytes either 1024 Petabyte or ¹⁰¹⁸. The petabyte is equal 1024 Terabyte or ¹⁰¹⁵.