Video will continue to deepen its dominance of Internet traffic as volumes increase four-fold between 2015 and 2020, according to a new report from Cisco Systems.

Internet video will account for 79% global Internet traffic by 2020, up 63% in 2015, Cisco found in its latest Visual Networking Index, a study that bases its findings on a mix of independent analyst forecasts and “real-world” network usage data.

Viewed another way, the Internet will support 3 trillion Internet video minutes per month by 2020, which equates to 5 million years of video per month, or about 1 million video minutes every second, Cisco said.

HD and Ultra HD Internet video will make up 82% of Internet video traffic by 2020, up from 53% in 2015, the report forecasted.

Broken down by sector, consumer video traffic will rise to 82% of all consumer Internet traffic by 2020, up from 68% in 2015, while business Internet video traffic will represent 66% of traffic in that category by 2020, up from 44% in 2015.

Virtual reality will also take a bite of bandwidth. VR-based traffic quadrupled in 2015, and is expected to increase 61-fold by 2020, Cisco said.

On a broader basis, global IP traffic will nearly triple at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22% over the next five years, as more than 1 billion new Internet users join the mix worldwide – growing from 3 billion in 2015 to 4.1 billion by 2020. Apps such as video surveillance, smart meters, digital health monitors and other machine-to-machine services will all contribute to big traffic boosts, Cisco predicted.

Global IP traffic is expected to reach 194.4 exabytes per month by 2020, up from 72.5 exabytes per month in 2015, Cisco said.

Global broadband speeds are also poised to nearly double from 24.7 Mbps in 2015 to 47.7 Mbps by 2020, the report found. Notably, 71% of total IP traffic will original from non-PC devices, such as tablets, smartphones and TVs, versus 47% in 2015. Smartphones will pump out 30% of total IP traffic by 2020, Cisco said.

Over the next five years, global IP networks will support 10 billion new devices and connections, increasing from 16.3 billion in 2015 to 26.3 billion by 2020, Cisco said, adding that there will be 3.4 devices and connections per capita by 2020, versus 2.2 per capita in 2015.

On the WiFi front, Cisco sees total public hotspots including home spots, surging from 64 million in 2015, to 432 million by 2020. Home spots are expected to grow from 57 million (2015) to 423 million by 2020.

In a forecast that bodes well for the cable industry’s ambitious WiFi initiatives in and out of the home, WiFi traffic will exceed wired traffic for the first time by 2018, according to a new report from Cisco Systems.

By 2018, Cisco also expects high-definition video traffic to generate more traffic than standard-def for the first time.

Those predictions are just two of a report full of them, alongside many other broadband-focused insights that Cisco pulled into its latest Visual Networking Index report, which looks at recent adoption trends and what’s on the horizon between 2013 and 2018.

More on mobile broadband – WiFi and mobile-connected devices will generate 61% of IP traffic by 2018, Cisco predicted, noting that WiFi will represent 49% of traffic, cellular 12%, and fixed traffic 39% by then. In comparison, WiFi represented 41%, cellular 3%, and fixed 56% in 2013.

IP video, Cisco said, will eat up 79% of all IP traffic by 2018, up from 66% in 2013. Ultra HD, meanwhile, will account for roughly 11% of IP video traffic in four years, up from a mere 0.1% in 2013. HD video, meanwhile, will account for 52% of all IP video traffic by 2018, up from 36% in 2013.

On a broader basis, Cisco predicted that global IP traffic will grow nearly three-fold over the next four years – reaching an annual run rate of 1.6 zettabytes, or half a trillion gigabytes by 2018 -- as Internet usage and IP-capable devices proliferate and use broadband to distribute video.

Also by 2018, Cisco expects the majority of traffic to originate from devices other than a PC.

Looking ahead to this week's kickoff of the FIFA World Cup, Cisco expects the soccer-fest to generate 4.3 exabytes of Internet traffic, about three times the amount of broadband traffic generated in Brazil, the event’s host country, in a month. To put it in further context, global IP traffic is expected to reach 132 exabytes per month by 2018, which is equivalent to 5.5 billion people binge-viewing Game of Thrones season 4 via VOD in HD or 1.5 billion people watching video in UltraHD/4K, Cisco said.

On the speed front, global broadband speeds will reach 42 Mbps 2018, up from 16% at the end of 2013, and the majority of broadband connections, or 55%, will be faster than 10 Mbps by 2018, Cisco said, noting that average broadband speeds in Japan and South Korea will approach 100 Mbps by the end of 2018.