The popularity of mobile devices will continue its dramatic growth over the next four years as new technologies kick in with higher density and bandwidth, according to Cisco’s annual Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update (2017 – 2022) released this week. 

Perhaps the key forecast: Mobile traffic will be on the verge of reaching an annual run rate of a zettabyte by the end of 2022. In that timeframe, mobile traffic will represent nearly 20 percent of global IP traffic and will reach 930 exabytes annually – nearly 113 times more than all mobile traffic generated globally in 2012. (An exabyte is 1,000,000,000 gigabytes and a zettabyte is 1,000 exabytes.)

The Cisco Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update is part the company’s overarching Visual Networking Index (VNI) that tracks and forecasts all manner of networking trends and directions culled from its own network traffic reports and independent analyst forecasts.

Other mobility predictions from Cisco:

For this study, Cisco also focused on measuring which organizations offloaded traffic from dual-mode devices (excluding laptops) that support both cellular and Wi-Fi connectivity, for example.

“Offloading occurs at the user or device level when one switches from a cellular connection to Wi-Fi or small-cell access. Our mobile offload projections include traffic from both public hotspots and residential Wi-Fi networks,” Cisco said.

“As a percentage of total mobile data traffic from all mobile-connected devices, mobile offload increases from 54 percent (13.4 exabytes/month) in 2017 to 59 percent (111.4 exabytes/month) by 2022. Offload volume is determined by smartphone penetration, dual-mode share of handsets, percentage of home-based mobile Internet use, and percentage of dual-mode smartphone owners with Wi-Fi fixed Internet access at home,” Cisco said. 

Other Wi-Fi predictions from the study:

Wi-Fi 6 – aka 802.11ax – will also be a factor in future installations, bringing with it a host of upgrades aimed at simplifying wireless network problems, Cisco said. Wi-Fi 6 supports multi-user, multiple-input, multiple-output (MU-MIMO) technology, meaning that a given access point can handle traffic from up to eight users at the same time and at the same speed. Previous-generation APs still divide their attention and bandwidth among simultaneous users.

More about 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6)

Wi-Fi 6 will also support larger constellations of low-powered IoT devices using fewer access points. The reliably deterministic nature of Wi-Fi 6 combined with its speed means it should be usable for life-safety applications, such as remote surgery devices, said Anand Oswal, senior vice president of engineering in Cisco’s Enterprise Networking Business recently.

While mobility and WiFi trends were two of the biggest items in the Cisco study, 5G directions made up a significant part of the report.

“The full value and transformational capabilities of 5G cannot simply be measured by performance improvements over 4G (higher bandwidth, broader coverage, and lower latency),” wrote Thomas Barnett, director of Cisco’s service-provider thought leadership in a blog about the report. “5G will also deliver enhanced power efficiency, cost optimization, massive IoT connection density and dynamic allocation of resources based on awareness of content, user, and location.”

5G will be able to concurrently support both low-end IoT applications, such as sensors and meters, as well as high-end IoT applications, such as autonomously driven cars, Barnett wrote.

The study said 5G growth will be driven by IoT applications – sensors and meters on the low end to autonomous cars on the high end. Awareness of conent, user and location will determine how 5G resources are allocated. "This technology is expected to solve frequency licensing and spectrum management issues. Large scale commercial deployments are not expected until the latter years of the current forecast,” Cisco said.

Some other 5G facts:

In its most recent VNI update Cisco said it foresees a massive buildup of IP traffic – 4.8 zettabytes per year by 2022, which is over three times the 2017 rate – lead by the increase in IoT traffic and video. The company also says there will be 4.8 billion internet users by 2022, up from 3.4 billion in 2017.

The VNI predicts an explosion of machine-to-machine (M2M) and IoT traffic. For example M2M modules account for 3.1 percent of IP traffic in 2017, but will be 6.4 percent of IP traffic by 2022. By 2022, M2M connections will be 51 percent of the total devices and connections on the internet.

This story, "Wi-Fi 6, 5G play big in Cisco’s mobile forecast" was originally published by Network World.