Restatement of VNI global mobile data traffic

[ellaaa11]

We are appreciate the global mobile data traffic forecasts provided by Cisco's VNI team. However, we found some restatements of actual data you provided. Such as in Cisco VNI Global Mobile Data Forecast, 2017–2022 white paper, the actual total mobile data traffic was 6.7EB per month for 2016, but in 2016-2021 white paper, the actual total mobile data traffic was 7.2EB per month for 2016. Thus, it's a bit difficult to compare actual data in 2017 to 2016 due to the restatements of historical data, which were not provided in latest white paper.

If it is possible, could you provide restated historical actual data for better comparison and to learn the growth trend?

Thanks VNI team's efforts for maintaining the useful database. 

[shjain · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your interest in Cisco VNI Global Mobile Forecast.  Following are the numbers for global mobile traffic:

Cisco VNI IP Traffic Volumes - Historical and Forecast
Region:	Global
Traffic Segment	Mobile
Year	Traffic (PB/mo)
2005	1
2006	3		Note:
2007	11		2005-2016	Actual
2008	30		2017	Estimated
2009	75		2018-2022	Projected
2010	199
2011	399
2012	686
2013	1,292
2014	2,379
2015	4,408
2016	6,738
2017	11,512
2018	19,009
2019	28,560
2020	40,770
2021	56,799
2022	77,493
Source: Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) IP Traffic 2017-2022

As you know the base year of the forecast is our estimates that we true up next year to actuals based upon the data that gets actually reported by operators and other regulatory agencies around the world.

I hope the above is helpful.

Regards,

Shruti

Cisco VNI team

[ellaaa11]

Hi Shruti,

Thank you and VNI team very much for providing the data. It is very very helpful.

I understood that the base year is estimated, and I believe it's would be more helpful if we could get actual numbers when it true up next year for better comparison.

If it is possible, could we have the actual data (2013-2016) by device type and by region as below?

We really appreciate your team's help and believe the data is very useful for lots of researchers. 

Thank you a lot!

[AbrahamChen50593]

Hi, Shjain:

0)   So glad to spot this thread of discussion!

1)   We have been studying the Internet performance history and are interested in the Total Global IP Traffic data such as the last row of the following table from a whitepaper:

   https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/white-paper-c11-741490.html

Table 8.       Global IP traffic, 2017–2022

IP Traffic, 2017–2022	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	CAGR (2017–2022)
By Type (Petabytes [EB] per Month)
Fixed Internet	85	107	137	174	219	273	26%
Managed IP	26	31	35	40	44	45	11%
Mobile data	12	19	29	41	57	77	46%
By Segment (EB per Month)
Consumer	100	129	167	212	267	333	27%
Business	22	27	34	42	52	63	23%
By Geography (EB per Month)
Asia Pacific	43	59	80	105	136	173	32%
North America	42	52	63	77	92	108	21%
Western Europe	18	22	27	33	41	50	22%
Central and Eastern Europe	8	10	12	15	20	25	26%
Middle East and Africa	4	5	7	10	15	21	41%
Latin America	7	9	11	13	16	19	21%
Total (EB per Month)
Total IP traffic	122	156	201	254	319	396	26%

Source: Cisco VNI, 2018

2)   From our best understanding of this series of annual documents, only data in the first column of each table was actual. Numbers for the five additional years were projections. Since we are already in February 2020, I thought that the equivalent data for Years 2018 & 2019 would be available somewhere by now. However, I failed to locate such after diligent web searches. Would you please shed some lights on this to expedite our efforts?

Thank you so much,

Abe (2020-02-09 11:18 EST)