Although less than the 74 percent spike in activity seen in 2009, it's consistent with the positive growth the past few years have seen.
Traffic grew the fastest in developing markets like Eastern Europe, India and South Africa, increasing by more than 100 percent.
The U.S. and Canada had 54 percent growth. But a disparity in the amount of available bandwidth exists between these mature markets and the countries where the Internet is a newer frontier.
According to the study, international carriers added 13.2 terabytes per second of capacity in 2010, compared to 9.4 terabytes per second in 2009.
"Carriers must add enormous amounts of new capacity each year to accommodate such traffic growth," said Alan Mauldin, TeleGeoraphy's research director. “Thanks to these large increases in bandwidth, traffic growth has not overwhelmed operators' networks, and overall network utilization levels have remained stable."
There is still room to grow, especially in regions like Africa, where there is less capacity in the entire continent than there is in the whole country of Austria.