The report, which presents some of Cisco’s major global mobile data traffic projections and growth trends, has also revealed that global mobile data traffic reached 3.7 exabytes per month at the end of 2015, up from 2.1 exabytes per month at the end of 2014. According to www.whatsabyte.com, “it has been said that 5 Exabytes would be equal to all of the words ever spoken by mankind” – with one exabyte equivalent to one billion gigabytes or one thousand petabytes.
It was also found that fourth-generation (4G) traffic exceeded third-generation (3G) traffic for the first time in 2015 and generated six times more traffic on average than a non 4G connection. Cisco statistics also show that 4G connections represented only 14 per cent of mobile connections in 2015 and account for 47 per cent of mobile data traffic, while 3G connections represented 34 per cent of mobile connections and 43 per cent of the traffic.
Mobile offloads exceeded cellular traffic for the first time in 2015. Just over half (51 per cent) of total mobile data traffic was offloaded onto the fixed network through Wi-Fi or femtocell in 2015. In total, 3.9 exabytes of mobile data traffic were offloaded onto the fixed network each month. More than half a billion (563 million) mobile devices and connections were added in 2015 and, according to Cisco, smartphones accounted for most of that growth.
Mobile network (cellular) connection speeds grew 20 per cent in 2015 and mobile video traffic accounted for 55 per cent of total mobile data traffic. Mobile video traffic now accounts for more than half of all mobile data traffic. Globally, the average mobile network downstream speed in 2015 was 2,026 kilobits per second (kbps), up from 1,683 kbps in 2014.
Jasper Technologies acquisition
Cisco has also announced its intent to acquire Jasper Technologies, a privately held company based in Santa Clara. It delivers a cloud-based IoT service platform for enterprises and service providers to launch, manage and monetize IoT services on a global scale. Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay $1.4 billion (£965.4 million) in cash and assumed equity awards, plus additional retention based incentives.
“Jasper was founded over a decade ago on the premise that through cloud software we could help enterprises realize the power of IoT,” said Jahangir Mohammad, CEO of Jasper, in an open letter. “Since then we’ve been helping enterprises transform into connected service businesses with all of the associated benefits: new customer experiences, automated operations and new recurring revenue streams.
“To deliver on this vision we’ve partnered with the best mobile operators in the world, representing over 100 networks. And today we are so proud to say that the Control Center platform powers IoT deployments in over 3500 enterprises around the world.
“We execute over 350 million automated actions every month, saving our enterprise users countless hours and operational costs. Every day, thousands of diagnostics are run on the platform, delivering higher reliability for your devices and services. It has been our mission to make enterprises highly successful with IoT. As we become part of Cisco, we shall carry this mission with us.”
