Netflix + YouTube = Half of North American Peak Downstream Traffic

May 15, 2013

This article is included in these additional categories:

Digital | Mobile Phone | Social Media

Sandvine-North-American-Downstream-Traffic-May2013Netflix isn’t the only video service eating up North American bandwidth, although it is the largest, according to [download page] Sandvine’s “Global Internet Phenomena Report 1H 2013.” The report reveals that Netflix accounts for 32.3% share of North American peak downstream fixed access traffic, a slight dip from H1 2012, with YouTube next at 17.1%, up from 13.8% in the researchers’ H1 2012 study. When it comes to mobile traffic, the opposite trends are true: YouTube leads with 27.3% share of peak traffic, but is down from 31%, while Netflix is far back at 4%, but up from 2.2% the prior year.

Early last year, a report found YouTube accounting for 24% of global mobile broadband traffic in the second half of 2011.

The Sandvine report contains a host of interesting statistics regarding internet traffic trends. Some notable findings are listed below.

  • The top 1% of subscribers in North America account for 34.2% of upstream traffic, while for downstream traffic, the comparable 1% account for 10.4% of traffic. By contrast, the bottom half account for just 6.4% of total monthly downstream traffic.
  • Smartphones and tablets now account for 20% of traffic on North American fixed access networks, a significant gain from 9% in H1 2012.
  • More than one-quarter of streaming audio and video bytes are delivered to mobile devices being used in the home.
  • The device eating up the most real-time entertainment traffic is the iPad, at more than 10%.
  • Apple devices gobble up more than one-third of all streaming audio and video on North American fixed access networks.
  • Mean monthly usage of mobile networks has grown by about 25% over the past year, while median usage has more than doubled.
  • Social networking applications account for a significant 10.6% of downstream traffic on mobile networks.
  • Audio and video streaming applications are projected to account for more than 60% of mobile usage by 2018.

About the Data: Sandvine’s Global Internet Phenomena Reports examine a representative cross-section of the world’s leading fixed and mobile communications service providers in March 2013 and are made possible by the voluntary participation of its customers. Collectively, Sandvine’s customers provide Internet and data service to hundreds of millions of subscribers worldwide.

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