Internet speeds will 'more than double' by end of the decade

Average UK broadband speeds are predicted to more than double in the next four years, in tandem with a massive rise in internet traffic.

The annual Cisco Visual Networking Index forecasts that most parts of Britain will have broadband speeds of 50Mb by 2019, up from the current average speed of 23.2Mb. Researchers found that UK speeds are already better than the 20.3Mb global average, which is expected to increase to around 43Mb by 2019.

Mobile broadband speeds are also tipped to more than double in the next four years as more people use their smartphones online and providers improve their services to match demand.

The yearly report found that on a global basis, internet traffic stands at around 59,851 PetaBytes per month at the moment and could increase to 167,973 PB by 2019. A jump in the number of people online, personal devices, machine-to-machine connections plus the expected faster broadband speeds are expected to lead to the higher usage. Researchers calculate that around a fifth of the growth will be down to business users.

Last year, almost four in 10 people around the world were online, or 2.8 billion people. However, this figure is predicted to jump to 3.9 billion or just over half of the global population in the next five years.

The number of devices being used to access the internet is also expected to leap over the period from 14 billion last year to 24 billion by 2019. Cisco said these would include smartphones, ultra-high definition TVs and wearable devices such as watches and health monitors. The fastest growing machine-to-machine segment is predicted to be connected health applications, which are forecast to increase by 54 per cent over the period.

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