Video Streaming Accounts for 70 Percent of Broadband Usage

An interesting new article from <re/code> shows just how hungry subscribers are for videos: video streaming accounts for 70 percent of home total broadband usage. That’s mainly YouTube and Netflix traffic, but close behind are Amazon and Hulu. That means that we spend more time watching videos at home during the prime evening time, than we do browsing, shopping, gaming or emailing! Only 5 years ago, we spend 35% of prime-time usage on video. And back then; we thought that number was high!

The graph below shows the usage percentages from Sandvine for home broadband. Look at the downstream bar. Fixed access basically means home broadband.

But what about mobile? Are the numbers the same, and what does the future hold? Well, turns out that video streaming also dominates mobile traffic, with 41% of total usage. Interestingly enough, social media is a close second at 22%. The numbers from Sandvine for mobile broadband usage are represented in the graph below.

So, do we think mobile video traffic will increase in the future? The answer is a hell yeah, duh! Every analysis shows that mobile video has been spiraling upwards, and there’s no sign or reason it should stop. Especially as people cut the cord, and as streaming video quality continues to improve, year-over-year.

Technologies like LTE Broadcast will help provide a greater experience to end-users, while allowing operators to sustain this service at a lower cost. But it’s kind of like adding more lanes to a highway isn’t it? Municipalities add lanes to a congested highway to improve throughput. But that in turn attracts more cars, and soon we find ourselves in the same congested predicament we were a few years back. Fortunately for operators, technology will continue to improve, and we will continue to find ways to provide a great quality of service to our video hungry subscribers.

You can read the full article here.