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What Will Australia’s Networking Traffic Look Like In 2019?

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Faster? Almost certainly, although fixed line speeds will outpace mobile by a significant factor. Here’s what you should consider when developing projects based on Cisco’s most recent Visual Networking Index.

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Cisco’s Visual Networking Index tries to predict major global networking trends, and the latest edition points to a few interesting local trends.

Data speeds are going to accelerate…

Perhaps a little on the obvious side, but worth keeping in mind for any projects you’re developing that are heavier on the data side, because it’s likely that your prospective clients or customers are going to be able to handle the load.

Cisco’s prediction is that data speeds will multiply by a factor of 2.4, from an average of 18.3Mbps in 2014 to 44Mbps by 2019.

…Because they’re going to need to

If you build a bigger pipe, they will use it. Cisco predicts that Australian IP traffic will increase 2.75-fold, from 0.6 exabytes per month to 1.4 exabytes per month in 2019. To put that into individual terms, the index suggests that by 2019, Australian internet traffic will equal 47GB for each user, up from an average of 17GB per capita in 2014.

A lot of that communication will be M2M

While fancy smartphones and tablets grab the headlines, it’s the systems doing the work behind the scenes that actually churn the data. By 2019, Cisco predicts that 54 per cent of all networked devices will be M2M modules, compared to only 10 per cent for smartphones and 6 per cent for tablets. Notably, that 6 per cent tablet figure represents no shift at all in terms of the tablet penetration rate.

Fixed networks will still outpace mobile

If what you’re developing requires fast mobile data, you may want to revise your plans. While Cisco suggests that 51 per cent of fixed broadband connections will be over 10Mbps (and 19.8% of connections will beat 25Mbps) by 2019, in the same time frame it’s predicting only a mild doubling of Internet speeds for mobile users, with average speeds by 2019 hitting only 6.7Mbps.

Mind you, we’ll be shifting ever more data through mobile networks, with a six-fold increase in data over mobile to 166 Petabytes per month by 2019. In fixed line terms, 383 Petabytes will flow, doubling from the 2014 rate.

Video will be key

Something has to account for all that data usage, and in Cisco’s estimation, it’ll be video that leads the data charge, with 81 per cent of IP traffic being given over to video delivery.

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