WATERLOO, ON – Netflix has upped its share of peak downstream traffic in North America to 34.2% from 31.6% last fall, due to the availability of high bitrate Super HD content, says a new report by Sandvine.
Global Internet Phenomena Report 1H2014 also found that peer-to-peer filesharing has fallen to 8.3% of total daily traffic in North America, a drastic drop from the 31% share it consumed in 2008.
The report also profiled North American subscribers who exhibit 'cord cutting' behavior, identifying them as the top 15th percentile of video users dominating network usage. This group consumed on average 212GB a month, more than seven times the 29GB of a typical subscriber, and accounted for more than half (54%) of total monthly network traffic. These viewers typically watched the equivalent of 100 hours of video each month.
Other highlights from the report include:
– Snapchat generates more traffic than any other third-party messaging app on North American mobile networks, and on one network, accounted for an astonishing 12% of total traffic on New Year's Eve;
– Twitch.TV, a live streaming service where video gamers watch each other play, has established itself among the top-15 applications on many fixed networks across the globe, and now generates more traffic than HBO GO on U.S. networks;
– In United Kingdom and Ireland, Netflix is now the second largest source of traffic during the peak evening hours, accounting for over 17.8% of downstream fixed access traffic;
– During the World Cup, live streaming of matches is predicted to account for over 40% of network traffic on some Latin American mobile networks;
– On several LTE networks in Asia, third-party messaging apps such as Line or WeChat are used by over 40% of mobile subscribers each hour; and
– On an African mobile network where the majority of subscribers have talk and text plans, WhatsApp accounts for over 23% of traffic due to the introduction of a low-cost, unlimited access plan for the service that is designed to drive data adoption.
Sandvine's Global Internet Phenomena Reports are based on a representative cross-section of data from a selection of its 250-plus communications service provider customers spanning North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Caribbean and Latin America, and Asia-Pacific. Data is gathered over a one-month period and is completely subscriber-anonymous. Sandvine's network equipment analyzes data from an application utilization level and is not content aware.
