No large carrier provides regular traffic volume statistics. However, sometimes they do release information about rates of growth or volumes. Some citations (in reverse chronological order) are given here:
- Feb. 12, 2008. In a net neutrality filing with the FCC, Comcast stated (p. 13, footnote 31) that "[o]n average, each Comcast High-Speed Internet customer uses more than 40% more bandwidth today than one year ago."
- Feb. 8, 2008. The British PlusNet ISP report on iPlayer Usage Effect shows a jump in streaming traffic from the introduction of the BBC's iPlayer. But it also shows that traffic per customer was just about constant between June and December of 2007, at 6.4 GB per month.
- Dec. 11, 2007. At an investor presentation, AT&T presented traffic growth graphs which show year-end 2007 AT&T IP backbone traffic of 405 TB/month, and annual growth rates of 83% in 2004, 67% in 2005, 34% in 2006, and 44% in 2007, with projections for growth rates of 108% in 2008 and 92% in 2009. Wireless data has been growing at about 300% per year. AT&T presentation deck, 11 MB.
- Dec. 2007. KPN conference presentation from the dominant Dutch service provider presents data on public peering of that carrier, but says that that the ratio of public to private peering has been stable, and that peering traffic has grown at 127% per year over the last 4 years. For the future, it projects growth rates of 81%, 100%, or 127%.
- Nov. 2007. Telecom Italia presentation, registration required for free download gives data traffic graphs for that carrier, with recent growth of about 70% for wireline traffic, and about 200% for wireless. Traffic volumes for what appears to be mid-2007 are 40 PB/month for wireline and 0.35 PB/month for wireless.
- Aug. 7, 2007. Cogent reported during their second quarter 2007 earnings conference call that traffic on their network grew approximately 95 percent from second quarter of 2006 to second quarter of 2007.
- May 17, 2007. A news story mentions that AT&T is carrying 10 PB (petabytes) per day on its networks.
- May 10, 2007. A Global Crossing report for the first quarter of 2007 cited total IP traffic growth of 176% over the previous year's quarter, VPN traffic growth of 120% over the same period, and IP-interconnected VoIP traffic growth of 147%.
- Dec. 6, 2006. An article in Forbes, "FCC And Mergers: 'Can You Hold?'" by Tim Doyle states that "Internet traffic has surged 60% on AT&T's core worldwide network this year (from 2005)," presumably based on data provided by AT&T Chief Operating Officer Randall Stephenson, since he is the only AT&T source cited in the article.
- Sept. 19, 2006. A story in Light Reading cited Simon Zelingher, VP of AT&T Labs, as saying that the AT&T network was carrying 5.4 PB (petabytes) per day (but without specifying whether this is just Internet traffic, or all the traffic on the AT&T network).
- June 6, 2006. Global Crossing press release about network upgrades mentions "IP traffic growth of 65 percent on its global IP backbone in 2005," with accelerated growth in the first quarter of 2006.
