Mobile internet data will see 13-fold growth between 2012 and 2017, with nearly half of traffic offloaded to fixed or Wi-Fi networks by 2017.

Cisco’s Visual Networking Index Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast for 2012 to 2017 also states that nearly 10 per cent of mobile connections will be supported by 4G technology by 2017.

Monthly global mobile data traffic is forecast by Cisco to reach 11.2 exabytes by 2017. With mobile data traffic at 885 petabytes per month in 2012, the 2017 figure represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 66 per cent.

In order to deal with the increase in data, operators will increasingly look to offload traffic from their mobile networks to Wi-Fi and fixed networks. By 2017, 46 per cent of traffic will be offloaded compared to 33 per cent in 2012, according to Cisco.

By 2017, 4G will support 10 per cent of mobile connections, compared to 1 per cent in 2012. 3G will increase to 57 per cent of connections compared to 23 per cent in 2012 with 2G falling to 33 per cent of connections compared to 76 per cent in 2012.

4G connections will account for 45 percent of mobile data traffic (5EB per month) in 2017, compared to 14 per cent in 2012 (124 PB per month).

Mobile data traffic will outpace fixed by a factor of three as the number of mobile users increases to 5.2 billion by 2017, compared to 4.3 billion in 2012. There will be more than 10 billion mobile connections in 2017, including more than 1.7 billion M2M connections, up from 7 billion in 2012.

Another factor driving the increase in data traffic is faster mobile speeds with average global network speeds forecast to increase seven-fold from 0.5 Mb/s in 2012 to 3.9 Mb/s in 2017.

The increase in mobile video will also be a factor, representing 66 per cent of global mobile data traffic in 2017, up from 51 per cent in 2012.

The Middle East and Africa region is projected to have the highest growth rate with a CAGR of 77 per cent — 17.3-fold growth. The APAC region will follow with a 76 per cent CAGR and will generate the most traffic with an estimated 5.3EB per month. North America will generate the second largest amount of mobile data traffic with 2.1 EB per month.

The vast majority (93 per cent) of global mobile data traffic will be driven by smartphones, tablets and laptops in 2017, with M2M traffic accounting for 5 per cent and basic handsets making up the remainder.