The ‘explosion' of video content across multiple devices is right at the heart of driving consumer broadband usage and global IP network traffic continues to grown climb at an overwhelming pace according to Cisco's Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast and Methodology, 2008-2013.

The major growth driver for this data explosion will be video and in particular mobile video will be the fastest growing application category.

Developed to estimate global Internet Protocol traffic growth and based on Cisco analysis and modelling of independent analysts' forecasts, the VNI projects that global IP traffic will increase fivefold by 2013 to 56 exabytes per month in 2013, up from approximately 9 exabytes per month in 2008. By 2013, Cisco believes that annual global IP traffic will reach two-thirds of a zettabyte (or 667 exabytes). (A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes.)

By 2013, the sum of all forms of video- such as TV, video on demand (VoD), Internet video, and P2P etc -- will likely exceed 90% of global consumer IP traffic with video communications traffic, such as video over instant messaging and video calls, increasing 10-fold from 2008 to 2013.

At the same time, mobile data traffic is predicted to more or less double each year from 2008 to 2013, increasing 66 times between 2008 and 2013. By the end of 2013 almost two-thirds (64%) of the world's mobile data traffic will be video in 2013.

The VNI also sees that there will be a global impact of video networking on screen size with digital screens of all types are proliferating along with other consumer devices. It predicts that not only is the number of networked devices multiplying, but the number of devices that have screens encourages more video consumption. Cisco says that the larger screen sizes are also accelerating the demand for higher-resolution video, thereby increasing the IP traffic required for each stream.

Commented Tony Bates, senior vice president and general manager, Cisco Service Provider Group, "visual networking is fundamentally changing the way we communicate, collaborate, view and share all types of content."