Africa’s IP traffic set to soar

Technology infrastructure developer and supplier Cisco this week released their Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI), which projects that the global Internet Protocol (IP) traffic will reach 413 million between 2012 and 2017, with Middle East and Africa (MEA) expected to be the fastest growing regions.

Cisco’s General Manager for Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, Dare Ogunlade, said that the region will see a massive growth in the time period. “Middle East and Africa (MEA) would continue to be the fastest growing IP traffic region from 2012 – 2017, with a 5-fold growth, at 38 per cent compound annual growth rate over the forecast period. MEA was the fastest growing region last year,” he said.According to the forecast, in the Middle East and Africa, IP traffic would grow 5-fold from 2012 to 2017; IP traffic in 2017 would be equivalent to 10 billion DVDs per year, 866 million DVDs per month, or 1 million DVDs per hour; Consumer Internet traffic grew 83 per cent in 2012 and business Internet traffic grew 63 per cent in the same year.

In 2017, the gigabyte equivalent of all movies ever made will cross Middle East and Africa’s IP networks every 2 hours.

The Cisco Visual Networking Index also highlighted that:

* 10 per cent of consumer Internet traffic was mobile in 2012, but 31 per cent of consumer Internet traffic will be mobile in 2017.

* 5 per cent of business Internet traffic was mobile in 2012, but that 14 per cent of business Internet traffic will be mobile in 2017.

* Consumer fixed Internet traffic grew 80 per cent in 2012 and had 53 per cent of total IP traffic in 2012, but predicted it would be 48 per cent of total IP traffic in 2017.

* Internet-Video-to-TV traffic increased 3-fold in 2012, and the average broadband speed grew 20 per cent from 2011 to 2012, from 3.1 Mbps to 3.7 Mbps.

* Fixed/Wi-Fi was 54 per cent of total Internet traffic in 2012, but is estimated to grow 54 per cent of total Internet traffic in 2017.

* Globally, the average fixed broadband speed will increase 3.5-fold from 2012 – 2017, from 11.3 Mbps to 39 Mbps, he said, adding that the average fixed broadband speed grew 30 per cent from 2011 – 2012, from 8.7 Mbps to 11.3 Mbps.

Accordin to the Index, “for increased global use of video services/applications, the statistics revealed that global network users would generate 3 trillion Internet video minutes per month, which is 6 million years of video per month, or 1.2 million video minutes every second or more than two years worth of video every second.”

Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor