Cisco: Video - Majority of Consumer IP Traffic by 2013

The future’s bright. The future is video. Or at least that’s what Cisco estimated that will happen by 2013 in their Visual Network Index 2008-2013 white paper that was published the other day. They also estimated that the amount of IP traffic will reach two thirds of a zettabyte (1 zettabyte = 1 trillion gigabytes) by that time, a 5 times increase as compared to this year’s IP traffic.

What seems to be driving this surge in IP traffic is video, and Cisco estimated that by 2013, video will count for around 90% of the total consumer IP traffic. Although a minor component right now, mobile video traffic will also make up the majority of mobile IP traffic in 2013 as well, Cisco estimating that it will reach about 64% of total mobile IP traffic.


As with all estimates, it helps to consider them with a grain of salt. However, taking into account that moving video around requires a lot of bandwidth, because of the sheer size of video files and streaming, it’s not really surprising the fact that video will eventually be the majority of IP traffic exchanged on the Internet.

However, knowing this, it will be interesting to see if there will be any disrupting technology that will somewhat revolutionize video streaming for example (and I’m thinking something beyond .flv and at HD quality, also available for mobile), much like the mp3 format revolutionized audio files and music industry.

Also, it will be interesting to see how WebTV will develop in this context, and how the large offline video production powerhouses will tap into the interactive and digital market (and we’ve already seen some steps with Hulu and Epix). It will also be interesting to watch the large mobile operators if they will manage to capitalize on the increase in mobile video traffic as well.

For more detailed information, check out the Cisco whitepaper, as well as the TechCrunch article linked below as source.

Via TechCrunch.