Sandvine

Fresh Meat! Sandvine’s Latest Work on Broadband Consumption Trends

By Sara Dirkse and Leslie Ellis

Sandvine released its Global Internet Phenomena report earlier this week, giving us a fresh look at how all these video streaming services — which we spend a whole lotta time studying — are performing.

Here’s the highlights.

Netflix continues to lead in fixed access (wired) downstream (toward consumers) traffic, with 31.6% of peak traffic during September. That’s down slightly, from 33% for the same period last year. But most of this data was collected before Netflix made SuperHD (1080P) content available to all subscribers – so Sandvine expects Netflix’s share of traffic to rally.

YouTube, on the other hand, grew 9% this year, and now accounts for 18.7% of peak downstream traffic. Together, YouTube and Netflix deliver more than half of all downstream traffic. (Note: This is only for fixed access — when it comes to mobile, YouTube tops the list — and Netflix comes in eighth. Go figure.)

File-sharing site BitTorrent continues to slide, netting just 4% of peak downstream traffic. BitTorrent remains #4 on the list of top traffic sources this year, but illegal/borderline illegal filesharing on the whole is losing traffic with gusto – more than a 20% drop over the past 5 years. This suggests that people will pay for streaming content, rather than going through the hassle, technically or morally, of downloading it illegally.

iTunes remains the czar of rental/VOD, in terms of traffic, but is down slightly in market share — dropping from 3.92% to 3.27%. Amazon also declined in viewing share, from 1.75% to 1.61%. That one surprised us, especially following reports of significant Prime subscriber growth in the past year.

Hulu cracked the Top 10 for the first time this year, with 1.29% of peak downstream traffic. Congratulations, Hulu. We’ll keep trying to remember to think of you first (or second, or third) when looking for stuff.

So thanks, Sandvine, for the update. There’s nothing like fresh data, from authentic spigots. It’s confirming to see some trends sustaining — like how streaming traffic continues to usurp peer-to-peer filesharing.

The jockeying of the streaming services, with toolkits inventoried with original content and service provider partnerships, are what we think will add the next contours of broadband consumption. We’ll be watching.