Internet traffic in India to equal 12 billion DVDs per year by 2020: Study

NEW DELHI: India's Internet traffic in 2020 will be equivalent to 12 billion DVDs per year, 1 billion DVDs per month, or 1 million DVDs per hour and Internet Protocol (IP) traffic will quadruple, year-on-year, between 2015 and 2020, according to the 11th Annual Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI).

The Indian digitization transformation, based on the adoption of personal devices and deployment of machine-to-machine (M2M) connections will have a greater impact on traffic growth.

Over the next five years, in India, there will be 1.9 billion networked devices, up from 1.3 billion in 2015, faster broadband speeds (average fixed broadband speed to increase 2.5-fold from 2015 to 2020 – from 5.1 Mbps to 12.9 Mbps) and the increased consumption of video.

Collectively, these variables are expected to help IP traffic in India to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 34 percent – as against a corresponding global CAGR of 22 percent.

"Video services and content continue to be the dominant leader compared with all other applications.In India, total Internet video traffic (business and consumer, combined will be 75% of all Internet traffic in 2020, up from 51% in 2015," the report said.

The Cisco VNI Global Forecast and Service Adoption study for 2015 to 2020 rely upon independent analyst forecasts and real-world mobile data usage studies. Upon this foundation are layered Cisco's own estimates for global IP traffic and service adoption. A detailed methodology description is included in the complete report. Over its 11-year history, Cisco VNI research has become a highly regarded measure of the Internet's growth. National governments, network regulators, academic researchers, telecommunications companies, technology experts and industry/business press and analysts rely on the annual study to help plan for the digital future.

“India finds itself in the middle of a digital revolution and, by 2020 Internet traffic will be equivalent to 249x the volume of the traffic in 2005, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 33% y-o-y. Much of this growth will be fueled by massive consumer adoption of personal devices and use of machine-to-machine connections," said Sanjay Kaul, Managing Director, Service Provider Business, Cisco India & SAARC.

"The continued increase of mobile data traffic, networked devices and M2M connections will impact healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing, retail, transportation and other key industries, substantially, as the next decade dawns. Considering this, network architecture must be programmed to meet the requisite demands and manage the data volume. Deploying advanced network infrastructure requires a next-gen approach to withstand the digital vortex," he further added.