International internet traffic has grown 62% in the past year, down slightly from the 74% growth in 2009, but in line with previous years, says TeleGeography.
The growth was mostly driven by Eastern Europe, India and South Asia, where web traffic more than doubled from mid-2009 to mid-2010, but the firm said mature markets including western Europe, US and Canada are “still growing rapidly.”
Traffic in western Europe grew 66% year-on-year, while in the US and Canada it climbed 54%, the firm revealed in its latest annual figures released yesterday.
TeleGeography Research Director Alan Mauldin said carriers added 13.2Tbps of new international capacity year-on-year, up from 9.4Tbps in 2009 and 6Tbps in 2008.
“Thanks to these large increases in new bandwidth, traffic growth has not overwhelmed operators’ networks, and overall network utilization levels have remained stable,” he said.
However, the volume of available international capacity varied greatly between countries.
In mid-2010 Austria, with a population of just over 8 million, had access to more bandwidth than the one billion inhabitants of Africa, the firm notes.