According to Cisco’s Visuals Networking Index (VNI) forecast (2012-17), globally the number of Internet users will rise to 3.6 billion, which will be more than 48 percent of the world’s projected population of 7.6 billion. Last year, global Internet users stood at 2.3 billion against a population of 7.2 billion.
The report further says India will see the speediest growth as it is estimated to have 348 million Internet users by 2017. Moreover, the web traffic India will go past 2.5 exabytes per month in 2017, significantly high from 393 petabytes per month in 2012.
“The good news is that Internet traffic growth in India is the fastest globally,” Cisco VP (Global Technology Policy) Robert Pepper said, highlighting there’s ‘great willingness’ on the part of the government and industry to push the broadband penetration in the country.
The Cisco VNI report further predicts IP traffic in India to grow six-fold by 2017 with annual growth rate of 44 percent. “In India, IP traffic will reach 2.8 exabytes per month in 2017, up from 454 petabytes per month in 2012,” it added.
The report also predicts a significant growth in terms of consumption of Internet for videos. By 2017, Internet video users will grow to 113 million (excluding mobile-only) from 16 million users in 2012. “In 2012, in India, non-PC accounted for 10 per cent of the IP traffic, but by 2017, the non-PC share will grow to 53 per cent,” it added.
Smartphones and tablets are expected to contribute 40 percent of the total IP traffic by 2017 while TVs are expected to have 10 percent share.
The Cisco VNI report predicts Internet traffic through mobile to grow consistently. “Indian mobile data traffic will grow 4 times faster than Indian fixed IP traffic from 2012 to 2017. Mobile was 3 per cent of total IP traffic in 2012, and will be 32 per cent of total IP traffic in 2017,” it added.
Source: Indian Express