Wi-Fi to Overtake Wired Network Traffic by 2015
Wi-Fi devices will for the first time use more bandwidth than wired devices in 2015, according to Cisco's new Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global IP Traffic Forecast. Cisco predicts Wi-Fi devices will consume 37.2 Exabytes of data worldwide per month …
Context & Ripple Effects
Cisco's latest Visual Networking Index forecast builds directly on the projection it published four months earlier that global mobile data would reach 75 Exabytes by 2015; this new edition extends that arc to the access layer itself, predicting Wi-Fi devices will consume 37.2 Exabytes per month worldwide in 2015 and surpass wired devices for the first time.
The forecast lands at a delicate moment for Cisco: the company spent April 2011 exiting consumer hardware — shutting down the Flip camcorder line it had bought via Pure Digital for $590 million two years earlier — while rumors circulated of thousands of job cuts. Doubling down on the VNI as the industry's traffic oracle keeps Cisco's authority anchored where it still sells: core routing and the infrastructure wireless growth runs on.
First-order effects
- Carriers and ISPs get a planning number they must provision against: if Wi-Fi carries more monthly bandwidth than wired networks by 2015, capacity budgets and peering arrangements built around wired assumptions start mispricing real usage patterns.
- For Cisco, the VNI functions as demand signaling — every forecast revision steers operator capital toward the routing, switching, and wireless offload gear Cisco sells, reinforcing its position even as it retreats from consumer products like Flip.
Second-order effects
- Mobile operators facing the 75-Exabyte mobile forecast have a structural incentive to push traffic onto Wi-Fi, shifting cost from licensed spectrum to unlicensed access points — which pulls router and hotspot vendors into the operator value chain.
- Equipment rivals must respond to Cisco framing the market's numbers: whoever publishes the accepted traffic baseline shapes what operators believe they need to buy.
Third-order effects
- If the crossover holds, network investment migrates structurally from wired last-mile builds toward wireless access and the wired backhaul feeding it — changing which vendors capture spend and how regulators treat spectrum versus rights-of-way.
- The VNI's semiannual cadence points toward traffic forecasts becoming the shared planning currency of the IP industry, giving one vendor outsized influence over how operators, investors, and policymakers size the network build-out.
The trend: IP traffic is migrating from wired to wireless as the default access path, with Cisco's Visual Networking Index forecasts serving as the industry's standing benchmark for sizing that shift.