SAN FRANCISCO — Asia will dominate the Internet with 42 percent of web traffic by 2015.
According to analyst firm Informa Telecoms & Media cited by Gigaom, Internet traffic will grow sevenfold between 2010 and 2015 to reach roughly 1.2 zettabytes globally, and by 2015 video will comprise half of the traffic.
Asia is expected to be the main source of web traffic surpassing North America. Although China will drive some of the growth, the report said it won’t lead the region despite its having 670 million Internet users by 2015.
And although video traffic is on the rise, the prediction is less than expected by industry watchers like Cisco that in 2010 predicted that video would make up 91 percent of all traffic by 2014.
Other services, such as cloud storage will also grow.
Despite Asia's preeminent position, the report pointed out distinctions between traffic growth in Asia and how people there use the Internet.
South Korea and Japan have the fastest broadband speeds in the world, but their Internet consumption is very different. South Korea has the highest per-head usage rate in the world but Japan lags behind Spain and Italy.
However, Japan has a more developed mobile Internet and less piracy where acquiring content online is more prevalent.
Japan also has lower quality video download capability as compared to Western countries due to higher costs of backhaul, the report stated.