Indian IP traffic to quadruple by 2019: Cisco

Internet Protocol (IP) traffic in India will quadruple at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33 percent by 2019 due to increasing mobile access and demand for video services, tech firm Cisco said on Thursday.

"It took 32 years - from 1984 to 2016 - to generate one zettabyte of IP Traffic annually. According to this year's Visual Networking Index, we will generate two zettabytes of IP traffic annually, just three years later in 2019," said Sanjay Kaul, managing director, global service provider business, Cisco India and SAARC, in the 10th annual Cisco Visual Network Index Forecast for India.

"In India, the IP traffic will grow fourfold from 2014 to 2019, a compound annual growth of 33 percent and reach four exabytes per month in 2019, up from 967 petabytes per month in 2014," he added.

Heavy consumption of mobile data, skyrocketing networked devices, faster broadband speeds and increased video consumption are the key drivers for the growth, the forecast said, adding networked devices in India will grow from 1.1 billion devices in 2014 to 1.6 billion in 2019, while average fixed broadband speed will increase from four mega bytes per second (mbps) in 2014 to 12 mbps in 2019.

Mobile data traffic is another area which is expected to see phenomenal rise in India - a 13 fold growth rate at a CAGR of 67 percent, says Cisco.

Mobile traffic was nine percent of the total IP traffic in 2014 and will reach 28 percent of the total IP traffic in 2019, the forecast said.