A new study this week by networking giant Cisco predicts that global mobile data traffic will increase 66-fold between 2008 and 2013 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 131 percent over the period. The findings – part of the firm’s Visual Networking Index (VNI) Mobile Forecast – suggest a surge in traffic caused by mobile Internet usage and mobile broadband services such as video. Cisco says that global mobile traffic will exceed 2 exabytes (2 billion gigabytes) per month by 2013. It adds that nearly 64 percent of traffic by this point will relate to mobile video, which is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 150 percent between 2008 and 2013. 

Mobile broadband handsets with 3G speeds or higher and laptop air or data cards will constitute more than 80 percent of global mobile traffic by 2013, the study adds. Latin America will have the strongest mobile growth at 166 percent CAGR, followed by the Asia-Pacific region at 146 percent. Asia-Pacific will account for one-third of all mobile data traffic by 2013. “[The findings] reflect the trend that consumers will use a variety of services, applications and devices to drive an increase in mobile traffic we’re predicting,” said Suraj Shetty, vice-president of service provider marketing at Cisco. “The evolving 4G mobile Internet transformation is further diversifying how people access and experience the Internet and is causing an undeniable surge in bandwidth growth.”