Global mobile traffic is poised to hit nearly a zettabyte by 2022, almost 113 times more than the amount generated 10 years before in 2012, according to Cisco’s annual Mobile Visual Networking Index Forecast.

Mobile traffic is predicted to reach 930 exabytes annually by the end of the forecast period, accounting for almost 20 percent of total global IP traffic—up from less than 5 percent a decade prior. 

To put that amount of data (1 trillion gigabytes) into perspective, Cisco said it equals “all moves ever made crossing global mobile networks every 5 minutes.”

Diving growth in mobile data traffic are factors including more mobile users and connections, and increased network speeds.

By 2022, Cisco forecasts the number of mobile users globally will increase by a half a billion from 2017 to 5.5 billion. During that same time mobile devices and IoT connections will jump from about 9 billion in 12.3 billion, including about 8 billion personal mobile devices and 4 billion IoT connections.

As mobile operators continue to buildout and enhance networks, Cisco says average mobile network speeds will hit 28.5 Mbps by 2022, up from 8.7 Mbps in 2017.

5G will support about 422 million connections globally by 2022, representing about 3 percent of global mobile device/M2M connections and accounting for nearly 12 percent of mobile data traffic.

WiFi is expected to continue to play an important role, including the offloading of mobile data traffic. By the end of the forecast period, Cisco says 59 percent of total mobile data traffic will be offloaded, up from 54 percent in 2017. Worldwide, WiFi hotspots are included to grow four times from 124 million in 2017 to 549 million in 2020. 

Overall, in 2020 WiFi will account for 51 percent of total IP traffic (up from 43 percent in 2017); 20 percent will be mobile (up from 9 percent); and wired will represent 29 percent of total IP traffic (down from 48 percent in 2017).

“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 Jonathan Davidson, senior vice president and general manager, Service Provider Business at Cisco, in a statement. “As global mobile traffic approaches the zettabyte era, we believe that 5G and WiFi will coexist as necessary and complementary access technologies, offering key benefits to our enterprise and service provider customers to extend their architectures.”