At OPLIN, we pay a lot of attention to forecasts related to the Internet – and then share some with you in this 4cast blog – and lately we’ve seen a number of documents that make predictions for 2015. (The 2015 date results from making 5-year projections based on 2010 data.) For OPLIN, these projections become an important consideration when we plan for our future services, especially when we project bandwidth costs or upgrade the features of our website kits. Some of these predictions might be helpful to you, too, as your library looks to the future.
- Where will the Internet be in 2015? (Datamation/Sean Michael Kerner) “According to Intel’s data, by 2015 there will be a billion more people connected on the Internet. In terms of traffic, Intel is forecasting more than 1,000 exabytes of Internet traffic by 2015.”
- Entering the zettabyte era (Cisco Visual Networking Index) “What can we expect in the next five years? Video will continue to gain traffic share and will transform the nature of the network in new ways as the video mix evolves towards real-time video content and applications. In addition to video, there is now evidence of a second transformation that will bolster growth and alter the dynamic of network traffic. This second transformation is not to be found in the network application mix, but rather in how we interface with the network, through a rapidly increasing and diversifying body of network devices.”
- More mobile Internet users than wireline users in the U.S. by 2015 (International Data Corporation) “…the number of mobile Internet users will grow by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.6% between 2010 and 2015. The newest release of the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide New Media Market Model (NMMM) forecasts that the impact of smartphone and, especially, media tablet adoption will be so great that the number of users accessing the Internet through PCs will first stagnate and then slowly decline.”
- Digital life: Today and tomorrow (Mitsue Venture/Inés Leopoldo) [7½-minute infographic video produced for the 2011 Merchant Risk Council European e-Commerce Payments & Risks Conference, Barcelona, Spain, May 2011]
Bandwidth fact:
If you’re used to thinking in terms of gigabytes, a zettabyte is 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) gigabytes, or 1,000 exabytes. In 2010, there were 245 exabytes of traffic on the Internet.
