Asia Will Become the New Center of the Internet

Internet traffic will grow seven-fold between 2010 and 2015 to reach roughly 1.2 zettabytes globally, and by 2015, video will comprise half of the traffic on the web according to a new report from analyst firm Informa Telecoms & Media.

This prediction expects more traffic in general and less video traffic than the other big forecast for web traffic offered by Cisco. Perhaps that’s because Informa isn't trying to sell gear to service providers. But it may just be the first of several reductions for video traffic coming down the pike, as Cisco’s own data on this is expected out within a few weeks. Asia will soon become the dominant source of web traffic with a 42-percent share by 2015, surpassing North America. China is driving some of that growth, but won’t be the dominant contributor of traffic in the region by 2015. However, China is expected to have 670 million Internet uses by that time, according to the report. Total global traffic will reach 1.2 million petabytes — or roughly 1.2 zettabytes — and while video will be half of that traffic, other services such as cloud backup applications will also grow. This is good for services such as Dropbox and other consumer cloud storage providers.