The average speed for fixed broadband services will nearly quadruple by 2016, to 34 Mbps, from the 2011 rate, Cisco predicted in its annual Visual Networking Index Forecast.

Demand for online video and the proliferation of mobile devices are driving significant increases in global IP traffic. Cisco projected Wednesday that annual global IP traffic will hit 1.3 zettabytes, or more than a trillion gigabytes, by 2016.

Also worth noting from the VNI forecast:

• The number of Internet video users will jump to 1.5 billion worldwide by 2016, which would be an increase of 792 percent compared to 2011.
• Traffic for advanced video services such as HDTV and 3DTV will increase five times between 2011 and 2016.
• There will be 3.5 billion Internet users worldwide by 2016.
• More than half of the world's Internet traffic will come from WiFi networks by 2016.