Cisco Reports Jump in South African Internet Traffic

South Africa is expected to see a massive jump in Internet traffic as more people switch to smartphones and other smart devices.

Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) has reported a jump in Internet traffic from South Africa, as the public there switches to smartphone devices. This was stated by a report from Cisco Visual Networking Index 2015, which predicts that the number of smartphone users will jump from the current 15 million to around less than 30 million by 2019. Whereas, Internet traffic from that side is expected to grow at an annual rate of 44%.

The IP based networking products maker predicts that by 2019, around 43 billion minutes of video content will be downloaded. It is an indication that businesses and consumers alike are taking advantage of growing access of social media to connect to one another. Meanwhile, mobile video traffic growth is expected at around 73%, as many South Africans also stream video content from their smartphones.

The facts provided by Cisco reinforce the views of many researchers who have highlighted how smartphones are going to play a very critical role for the development of South Africa, especially when the infrastructure, despite well-developed, is showing signs of creaking due to pressure from population. Public is becoming more aggressive of being close to those managing the business, in order to demand better goods and services.

According to a study commissioned by the by Orange Horizons on the provision of Wi-Fi in Mitchell’s Plain and Khayelitsha near Cape Town, it was revealed that nearly 9% of the respondents used Internet on their smartphone. These respondents were granted 3GB data free during the day, but around half of them stated that the speed and access were not enough and wanted more.

In fact, according to the same Cisco research, smartphones will cement their position by 2019 as the most primary tool to have access to the Internet, at around 30% for all networked devices, a rise from 2% last year. Demand for video is likely to serve as a driving force for new internet video services that is expected to eat up less than 80% of IP traffic.

Finally, Cisco also predicts that by 2019, the average broadband speed will rise from the current 3.5 Mbit/s to around 10 Mbit/s, which will likely result in the growth of smart TVs and machine-to-machine communications. Overall, it is a very bullish outlook for the South African IT industry. The next age is regarded as the age of smart devices.

Cisco stock price ended the day at $28.28, a decline of 0.42% from the previous day.