Global internet bandwidth increased by 23% in 2025, maintaining its consistent pace of steady growth.
Total international bandwidth now stands at an impressive 1,835 Tbps, representing a four-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24%.
Although the pace of growth has slowed ever so slightly in recent years, bandwidth has still more than doubled since 2021.
Naturally, capacity growth varies across different regions. Once again, Africa led the way with the most rapid growth in international internet bandwidth, expanding at a compound annual rate of 38% between 2021 and 2025. The Middle East followed, growing at a 27% compound annual rate over the same period.
The combined effects of new internet-enabled devices, growing broadband penetration in developing markets, higher broadband access rates, and bandwidth-intensive applications will continue to fuel strong internet traffic growth.
While end-user traffic requirements will continue to rise, not all of this demand will translate directly into the need for new long-haul capacity.
A variety of factors shape how the global internet will develop in the coming years:
This is the most hyped demand driver in recent years, but its impact on international internet capacity is not entirely clear. The effect of AI will not be solely felt in the networks of the large cloud providers involved in AI, such as Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft.
Many companies are offering GPUs-as-a-Service (GPUaaS), which allows anyone access to GPUs to train their own models or use them for inference. As users deploy AI models and inference clusters using these GPUs, the traffic will ultimately run through the networks of many operators, not just those of the major cloud providers.
The largest content providers have long operated massive networks.
These companies continue to experience more rapid growth than internet backbones, and they are expanding into new locations. Many other companies, such as cloud service providers, CDNs, and even some data center operators, operate private backbones that bypass the public internet. As a result, a rising share of international traffic is carried by these networks.
While there’s little doubt that enhanced end-user access bandwidth and new applications will create large traffic flows, it's not clear how much of this growth will require the use of international links.
In the near term, the increased reliance on direct connections to content providers and the use of caching will continue to have a localizing effect on traffic patterns, dampening international internet traffic growth.
International transport unit costs underlay IP transit pricing. As new international networks are deployed, operational and construction costs are distributed over more fiber pairs and more active capacity, making each packet less expensive to carry.
We are already seeing a major shift from 10 GigE requirements to 100 GigE requirements, and we expect that 400 GigE will emerge in two to three years as a significant part of the market.
The introduction of new international infrastructure also creates opportunities for more regional localization of content and less dependence on distant hubs. As emerging markets grow in scale, they will also benefit from economies of scale, even if only through cheaper transport to internet hubs.
You’ll find more research like this in our IP Networks Research Service, the most complete source of data and analysis about international internet capacity, traffic, service providers, ASN connectivity, and pricing.
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