Cisco: 79% of world’s mobile traffic to be video by 2022

Roughly 79% of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2022, up from 59% in 2017, according to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index.  

The stat was included in an update to the firm’s Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast 2017 – 2022, which predicted that mobile video traffic will increase nine-fold over the forecast period.

“Because mobile video content has much higher bit rates than other mobile content types, mobile video will generate much of the mobile traffic growth through 2022,” according to the report.

Cisco estimates that mobile video will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 55% between 2017 and 2022, higher than overall average mobile traffic at a CAGR of 46%.

Of the 77 exabytes per month expected to cross the mobile network by 2022, the study claims that nearly 61 exabytes will be due to video.

“One consequence of the growth of video in both fixed and mobile contexts is the resulting acceleration of busy- hour traffic in relation to average traffic growth,” said the report.

“Video usage tends to occur during evening hours and has a ‘prime time,’ unlike general web usage that occurs throughout the day. As a result, more video usage means more traffic during the peak hours of the day.”

In terms of connectivity, Cisco predicts that 4G connections will account for 54% of total mobile connections and 71% of total mobile traffic by 2022.

By comparison, 5G is expected to account for 3.4% of connections and 11.8% of traffic by 2022, with a 5G connection anticipated to generate 2.6 times more traffic than the average 4G connection.

In the UK, the forecast tips 28.6% of all mobile data traffic to run on 5G by 2022 – second only to the US in terms of 5G concentration and higher than China, France and Germany.

“As global mobile traffic approaches the zettabyte era, we believe that 5G and WiFi will coexist as necessary and complementary access technologies, offering key benefits to our enterprise and service provider customers to extend their architectures,” said Jonathan Davidson, senior vice president and general manager, service provider business, Cisco.