Cisco: The Future is Video, on Mobile and Everywhere Else

If you had any doubt video is the future of digital activity, consider the results of Cisco’s annual visual networking index, released yesterday.

According to the forecast, global IP traffic will quintuple by 2013 as measured in data volume. Cisco estimates the sum of all forms of video — including TV, video on demand, Internet video, and P2P — will exceed 90 percent of global consumer IP traffic. While estimating data flow is not too meaningful as a gauge of media consumption (census and panel data are surely better), the anticipated five-fold increase in Web traffic demonstrates pretty well how moving pictures will continue to define the interactive media experience — and the culture at large.

Other findings from the index:

• • -The Middle East and Africa will grow faster than other regions, with a compound annual growth rate of 51 percent.

• • -More than 60 percent of mobile data traffic will be video in four years. Mobile traffic will approximately double each year until 2013.

• • -Cisco believes multi-tasking and time-shifting behaviors have turbocharged data traffic. Activities such as streaming music while viewing photos, recording shows while working, and instant messaging while on the phone are adding many additional hours of networked data traffic per day.