From 2017 to 2022, mobile data traffic in Germany per capita will increase from 1.2 to 4.5 Gbit per month - a fourfold increase. However, the average speed of mobile networks will only increase slightly more than threefold in the same period - from 13.1 to 46.3 Mbit. This is shown by the current 'Cisco Visual Mobile Networking Index', which provides forecasts and trends for mobile networks.

If the rollout of 5G networks goes according to plan, they will support 9.2% of all mobile connections by 2022. At the same time, the share of 4G in Germany will increase from 35.8% to 61%. Accordingly, 3G will fall from 46.8% to 3.4% and 2G from 15.3% to 2.5%. The speed of 4G networks will increase from 27.1 to 48.1 MBit/s, while 5G networks will reach 181.2 MBit/s. In three years, these will transmit 27.3% of all mobile data in Germany and 2.5 times more per connection than 4G networks.

In total, mobile data traffic in Germany will amount to 4.4 exabytes in 2022 - compared to 1.2 exabytes in 2017. German citizens will then receive and send 2.6 GB per month via each personal mobile device, compared to 0.8 GB in 2017. Including M2M and LPWA, mobile traffic per connection will grow from 0.7 to 1.5 GB per month. The number of users will increase only slightly from 71 to 72 million during this period, which corresponds to 87% of the population in 2022. This means that saturation has largely been reached.

In three years, more than half of all IP traffic (51%) will be transmitted via Wi-Fi, 44% via wired networks and 4% via mobile networks. By comparison: in 2017, 42% was via Wi-Fi, 55% wired and 3% mobile. Without the option of offloading to Wi-Fi, mobile data traffic would increase at an annual growth rate of 41%; with offloading, it is only 30%. The rate of offloading mobile data traffic to WLAN is growing from 67% to 78%. The number of Wi-Fi hotspots, including homespots, will increase from seven million to 27 million between 2017 and 2022 and the average speed of the Wi-Fi connection from 27.2 to 53.7 Mbit/s.

Worldwide results

In three years, mobile networks worldwide will transfer almost a zettabyte (930 exabytes) of data for the first time. Mobile traffic will then account for almost 20% of global IP traffic - with more than 12 billion mobile devices and IoT connections, compared to 9 billion in 2017.

In 2017, there were 5 billion mobile users worldwide; by 2022, there will be 5.5 billion, which corresponds to around 71% of the global population. The average global mobile speed will more than triple from 8.7 Mbit/s in 2017 to 28.5 Mbit/s in 2022.

5G connections will account for more than 3% of all mobile connections and almost 12% of mobile traffic in three years with more than 422 million 5G devices and M2M connections The average 5G connection in 2022 will generate about three times more traffic (22 GB/month) than the average 4G connection (8 GB/month).

In 2022, over half of all IP traffic (51%) will be transmitted via Wi-Fi, 29% via wired networks and 20% mobile. In 2017, it was 43% via Wi-Fi, 48% wired and 9% mobile. The number of Wi-Fi hotspots worldwide will increase from 124 million (2017) to 549 million (2022).