A shaky global economy over the past two years has slowed the growth of Internet traffic, but bandwidth has more than doubled.
New data from TeleGeography’s Global Internet Geography research finds that the rate of international Internet capacity growth fell to the lowest pace in five years, decreasing from 68% in 2008 to 40% in 2012. While the pace of growth is slowing, international Internet bandwidth continues to grow rapidly, more than doubling between 2010 and 2012, to 77Tbps.
The slower rate of expansion internationally may be attributable to the tough economic climate across Europe and Asia.
Nevertheless, the underlying drivers of bandwidth demand remain strong, the report states. Broadband penetration rates in developing markets remain modest. In more mature markets, where the pace of broadband subscriber growth has slowed, faster broadband speeds and the growing adoption of bandwidth-intensive applications, most notably online video, are spurring higher traffic volumes per user.
