Friday 29 March 2024
 
»
 
»
SPECIAL REPORT

Over 1bn mobile users in MEA by 2022: Cisco

RIYADH, June 13, 2019

There will be one billion mobile users in the Middle East and Africa by 2022, representing 58 per cent of the region's population, up from 798 million in 2017, said global networking leader Cisco in a new report.

According to this year’s Mobile Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast update (2017 – 2022), mobile traffic will be on the verge of reaching an annual run rate of a zettabyte by the end of the forecast period.

By 2022, mobile traffic will represent nearly 20 per cent of global IP traffic and will reach 930 exabytes annually. This will equate to nearly 113 times more than all global mobile traffic generated just ten years prior, in 2012.

Mobile technologies continue to connect more people and things than ever before. In 2017, there were five billion mobile users worldwide, but over the next five years, that number will increase by half a billion to 5.5 billion users, which represents about 71 per cent of the global population.

Cisco’s key predictions for Middle East and Africa:

1.    A sharp rise in mobile user and connection traffic

•    Mobile traffic per user will reach 7,649 megabytes per month by 2022, up from 777 megabytes per month in 2016 – a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 57 per cent.
•    Mobile traffic per mobile connection (including M2M/LPWA) will reach 4,061 megabytes per month by 2021, up from 459 megabytes per month in 2016, a CAGR of 55 per cent.

2.    Evolvement towards smarter multimedia mobile devices

•    In 2017, smart devices and connections accounted for 27 per cent of mobile devices and connections in MEA, excluding Low Power Wide Area connections (LPWA). By 2022, Cisco anticipates an increase to 77 per cent of connections.

•    Smart devices and connections made up 78.3 per cent of total mobile data traffic in 2017. Such traffic is expected to rise to 96.1 per cent by 2022.

•    By 2022, Cisco predicts that 20 per cent of MEA’s mobile connections will be 2G, whilst 54 per cent will be 3G. With network providers keen to provide seamless connections, it is anticipated that 4G will account for 23 per cent of 23 per cent regional mobile connections and 5G – a 0.2 per cent share. As more M2M and IoT devices become connected, LPWA technology is expected to make up 4 per cent of mobile connections.

3.    More mobile IoT adoption – M2M and wearables

•    MEA will have the second highest growth rate in terms of mobile M2M connections, with a CAGR of 31 per cent between 2017 and 2022.

•    It is predicted that M2M traffic will grow almost ten-fold between 2017 and 2022, with a CAGR of 58 per cent.

4.    Improved mobile network and Wi-Fi speeds
    
•    10.9 Mbps increase to 15.3 Mbps.

•    Average Wi-Fi speeds are also expected to increase, from 6.2 Mbps in 2017 to 11.2 Mbps in 2022.

•    The gigabyte equivalent of all movies ever made will cross mobile networks every 31 minutes in MEA by 2022.

“Cisco is committed to helping network operators meet the growing bandwidth needs of mobile consumers, business users and the diverse collection of IoT applications,” said Ali Amer, managing director, Global Service Provider Sales, Cisco Middle East and Africa.

“As global mobile traffic approaches the zettabyte era, we believe that 5G and Wi-Fi will coexist as necessary and complementary access technologies, offering key benefits to our enterprise and service provider customers to extend their architectures. We look forward to ongoing discussions with our customers in the Middle East and Africa, preparing for this growth and mapping out their network architecture transitions.”

The Cisco Mobile VNI Forecast includes global, regional, and country-level projections and trends associated with mobile (2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G) radio networks. The full report includes additional information and analysis on mobile traffic growth, mobile devices/connections, mobile IoT by various industry verticals, mobile IPv6 adoption, mobile network performance, wi-fi offload from cellular devices/connections, and mobile tiered pricing (unlimited and shared plans). – TradeArabia News Service




Tags:

calendarCalendar of Events

Ads