Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOm points out a report from UK analyst firm Informa Telecoms & Media which says that Internet traffic will grow seven-fold between 2010 and 2015 to reach roughly 1.2 zettabytes globally and that Asia will lead the growth.
According to the report, the amount of Internet and service traffic will vary greatly from region to region and, despite the focus on the U.S., Asia will be the larger region in terms of traffic by 2015. Asia Pacific’s share will have increased to 42% of global Internet traffic by virtue of the sheer growth in user numbers that this region will see over the forecast period. “Much of the hype about Internet traffic growth continues to come from the U.S. and Silicon Valley, but it is the Asian Internet users that are generating the most traffic. This will only become pronounced over the next few years, as the region’s Internet penetration grows”, comments Giles Cottle, Senior Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media.
China will also play a major role in fueling this growth. “China will not become the single largest Internet traffic market during our forecast period, but it will have a fundamental impact on shifting the online balance of power from East to West. In China alone, Informa predicts that there will be 670 million Internet users in the market in 2015; even if many of these users are not high-volume users, they will still collectively produce a huge amount of traffic,” concludes Cottle.
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I wrote about Chinese becoming the lingua franca of the web here.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.