May 27, 2011 – According to a recent report from Informa Telecoms & Media, Internet users will up- and download 1.2 million petabytes of data per year by 2015, around seven times more than in 2010.

The report noted that video will experience the most significant growth due to services, such as BBC iPlayer and Netflix, and will account for over half of all Internet traffic by 2015, while online storage and back-up services such as Rapidshare and Dropbox will experience considerable growth.

Asia, not North America, will be the dominant region of internet and service traffic share by 2015.

“Asia Pacific’s share will have increased to 42% of global Internet traffic by virtue of the sheer growth in user numbers that this region will see over the forecast period,” stated the report.

“Much of the hype about Internet traffic growth continues to come from the US and Silicon Valley, but it is the Asian Internet users that are generating the most traffic. This will only become pronounced over the next few years, as the region’s Internet penetration grows‚” commented Giles Cottle, senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media.

“China will not become the single largest Internet traffic market during our forecast period, but it will have a fundamental impact on shifting the online balance of power from East to West. In China alone, Informa predicts that there will be 670 million Internet users in the market in 2015; even if many of these users are not high-volume users, they will still collectively produce a huge amount of traffic,” concluded Cottle.