Video will continue to dominate IP traffic, representing 82% in 2021

Global IP traffic will multiply by three in the next five years, exceeding 3 Zettabytes in 2021. In 2021 there will be 27.1 billion connected devices (51% being IoT connections) and 4.6 billion Internet users globally, while video will represent 82% of total IP traffic.

Over the next five years, digital transformation will continue to have a major impact on the demands and requirements of IP networks. Global IP traffic will increase three-fold between 2016 and 2021, reaching 3.3 Zettabytes per year in 2021 from 1.2 Zettabytes per year recorded in 2016, representing a year-on-year increase rate of 24%.

In Spain, IP traffic will multiply by three in this period, reaching 37 Exabytes per year in 2021 - the equivalent in Gigabytes of all the films produced in the world in history crossing Spanish IP networks every two hours - from the 12 Exabytes per year registered in 2016 (year-on-year growth of 23%).

This is clear from the twelfth edition of the annual Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Forecast and Service Adoption 2016-2021 Report.

In 2021 there will be 4.6 billion Internet users (58% of the projected world population: 7.8 billion inhabitants according to the UN) from the 3.3 billion registered in 2016 (44% of the world population). In Spain there will be 36.3 million Internet users in 2021 (79% of the population), up from the 33.5 million counted in 2016 (73% of the population).

By that time there will be 27.1 billion connected devices (3 for every inhabitant of the planet), compared to the 17.1 billion recorded in 2016 (2 devices per capita) including Machine-to-Machine (M2M) connections. In Spain there will be 345 million connected devices in 2021 (7 connections per inhabitant), up from the 196 million recorded in 2016 (4 connections per capita).

M2M connections will represent more than half of total connections on a global scale and will generate 5% of total IP traffic in 2021. Advances in Internet of Things (IoT) segments such as connected home, connected transportation/smart vehicles, connected health, and other next-generation M2M services are driving this exponential growth, multiplying almost by 2.4 from the 5.8 billion recorded in 2016 to 13.7 billion expected for 2021.

With the proliferation of connected applications such as health controllers, medication dispensaries and early assistance devices, the connected health segment will be the fastest growing (30% increase year-on-year), followed by connected transportation and connected city applications (29% each) on a global scale.

Video trafficking

Video will continue to dominate IP traffic, representing 82% in 2021 (79% in Spain), up from 73% (64% in Spain) in 2016. Globally, there will be almost 1.9 billion Internet video users (excluding mobile-only) in 2021, up from 1.4 billion in 2016. In 2021, 3 trillion minutes of video will be consumed on the Internet. monthly on a global scale, which means five million years of video monthly or one million minutes of video every second. In Spain, video will represent 77% of all Internet traffic in 2021 (60% in 2016) and in 2021 46 million minutes of video will be consumed on the Internet each month.

Live video on the Internet will multiply by 15, reaching 13% of all video traffic on the Internet in 2021 (80% of total Internet traffic), which means greater use of streaming TV applications and personal streaming videos on social networks. Although live streaming video will represent the largest traffic in the entertainment segment, virtual reality and augmented reality are also growing at a good pace, multiplying by 20 by 2021 and accounting for 1% of total entertainment traffic.

Globally, the average fixed broadband speed will multiply almost by two between 2016 and 2021, from 27.5 Mbps to 53 Mbps. In Spain, the average fixed broadband speed will multiply almost by two between 2016 and 2021, from 38 to 65 Mbps.

In 2021, more than half (56%) of connected flat TVs globally will be high definition (4K), up from 15% in 2016. On the other hand, there will be 663 million connected 4K flat TVs installed/in service (85 million in 2016) globally.

In Spain there will be 9 million connected 4k flat televisions installed/in service (57% of the total), compared to the 966,0000 recorded in 2016 (12% of the total), which represents a 56% year-on-year increase.

The consumption of Internet video content (both through fixed and mobile connections) in homes is supplanting traditional cable television subscriptions and conventional TV (a trend known as cord-cutting).

Homes that follow this trend generated an average of 117 Gb of monthly traffic in 2016, 86% more than the 63 Gb per month of a conventional home connected to the Internet in 2016. Conventional connected homes will generate a global average of 155 Gb of Internet traffic per month in 2021.

Access to the full report.