MENA IP traffic to grow 30 percent annually

MENA IP traffic

A global study has revealed that business IP traffic in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is set to increase 30 percent a year until 2014 - meaning that, ultimately, MENA IP traffic will have the strongest growth in the world.

Yesterday, Cisco released its annual Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast, 2009-2014, which projected that global IP traffic will grow more than fourfold to 767 exabytes by 2014, which is 100 exabytes higher than the projected level in 2013.

However, whereas IP traffic around the globe is predicted to increase, on average, by 21 percent, MENA IP traffic growth is forecasted to be nine percent higher than anywhere else: MENA IP traffic alone is set to reach one exabyte per month by 2014 and will generate 727 petabytes per month; the equivalent of 182 million DVDs worth of traffic.

MENA mobile data traffic is also forecasted to increase at the quickest and strongest rates. According to the Cisco VNI Forecast, MENA will witness growth at 133 percent Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR), followed by the Asia-Pacific which will see increases of 119 percent and North America at 117 percent.

UAE leading MENA IP traffic growth?

According to Wayne Hull, Director and General Manager of Cisco in the UAE: "These figures demonstrate the growth of the ICT industry in the Middle East" and said that the reasons behind the predicted MENA IP traffic figures are "fuelled by the government's initiatives to create world-class citizen services, along with the expansion of the telecom industry."

Mr. Hull believes that the UAE is at the heart of IP traffic growth in MENA, saying: "The UAE's vision around ICT continues to lead the region...On a country perspective, the UAE is positioned to be a regional ICT hub across the Middle East and is already demonstrating market readiness."

Additional areas of global growth

Business video conferencing is projected to grow ten-fold from 2009-2014, increasing almost three times as fast as overall business IP traffic, at a CAGR of 57 percent over the forecasted period.

The fastest growing sub-category globally is web-based video which is expected to grow 180-fold from 2009-2014. This is a 183 percent CAGR.

The growth in traffic will continue to be dominated by video, exceeding 91 percent of global consumer IP traffic by 2014. Improvements in network bandwidth capacity and Internet speeds, along with the increasing popularity of HDTV and 3DTV are key factors expecting to quadruple IP traffic from 2009-2014.

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