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Online video to boom in MEA by 2021

Paula Gilbert
By Paula Gilbert, ITWeb telecoms editor.
Johannesburg, 09 Jun 2017
Cisco predicts 28% of the MEA population will use the Internet in 2021, up from 21% in 2016.
Cisco predicts 28% of the MEA population will use the Internet in 2021, up from 21% in 2016.

By 2021, 81% of all Internet traffic in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) will be video.

This is according to Cisco's 12th annual Visual Networking Index Complete Forecast, which projects future IP and Internet traffic trends. Last year, the amount of MEA Internet traffic that was video was 62%.

However, Internet usage numbers will remain low in the region, with the report predicting that 28% of the MEA population will use the Internet in 2021. This is, however, an improvement on the statistic of 21% last year. Global forecasts show that overall Internet users will grow from 3.3 billion in 2016 to 4.6 billion by 2021, which will represent 58% of the total global population.

By 2021, in MEA, there will be 35GB of Internet traffic per month, per user ? this is up from 8GB in 2016. Cisco also predicts monthly Internet traffic in MEA will generate three billion DVDs' worth of traffic, or 10.3 exabytes (EB) per month.

Network devices are also on the rise and the index shows that in four years, there will be 1.4 network devices and connections per person in the region, compared to 1.1 in 2016.

Africa can also look forward to better broadband speeds. Cisco says by 2021, the average broadband speed in MEA will be 17.1Mbps, up from 7.8Mbps last year. However, when looking at global forecasts, average world broadband speeds will increase to 53Mbps by 2021, compared to 27.5Mbps in 2016.

Africa's mobile-centric culture will also be aided when MEA's average mobile speed reaches 11Mbps in 2021, compared to 3.8Mbps on average in 2016. Globally, the average mobile speed will grow from 6.8Mbps in 2016 to 20Mbps in 2021.

Middle East and Africa digital transformation 2016-2021. Graphic courtesy of Cisco.
Middle East and Africa digital transformation 2016-2021. Graphic courtesy of Cisco.

Global forecasts

Cisco predicts that globally, there will be nearly 1.9 billion Internet video users (excluding mobile-only) by 2021, up from 1.4 billion in 2016. Emerging mediums like live Internet video are expected to increase 15-fold and reach 13% of Internet video traffic by 2021.

The report also projects an increase in adoption of personal devices and machine-to-machine (M2M) connections ? from 17.1 billion to 27.1 billion. By 2021, virtual reality/augmented reality traffic will increase 20-fold and represent 1% of global entertainment traffic.

For the first time in the 12 years of the forecast, M2M connections that support Internet of things applications are calculated to be more than half of the total 27.1 billion devices and connections, and will account for 5% of global IP traffic by 2021.

Global IP traffic will grow three-fold from 2016 to 2021 and is expected to reach 278EB per month by 2021. Global IP traffic is expected to reach an annual run rate of 3.3-zettabytes by 2021.

Cisco says WiFi and mobile-connected devices will generate 73% of Internet traffic by 2021 and total public WiFi hotspots (including homespots) will grow six-fold from 94 million in 2016 to 541.6 million by 2021.

SD-WAN will increase six-fold over the forecast period and represent 25% of WAN traffic by 2021. Meanwhile, in terms of security issues, the number of distributed denial-of-service attacks grew 172% in 2016 and will increase 2.5-fold to 3.1 million by 2021 globally.

Global predictions 2016-2021. Graphic courtesy of Cisco.
Global predictions 2016-2021. Graphic courtesy of Cisco.

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