Over 70% of North American traffic now streaming video and audio


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Joseph O'Halloran

| 08 December 2015




Real-time entertainment traffic now accounts for over 70% of North American downstream traffic in the peak evening hours on fixed access networks.



This is the stand-out finding in the latest version of the Sandvine Global Internet Phenomena Report which also showed the phenomenal growth of such services. Specifically, five years ago this figure was only 35%.

Of the streaming services, Netflix (37.1%), YouTube (17.9%) and Amazon Video (3.1%) were the top three sources of video traffic on fixed access networks in North America. Each saw an increase in traffic share over the levels observed earlier in the year

Commensurately with the growth of video, BitTorrent’s share continued to see a decline in fixed access bandwidth share, and now accounts for only 5% of total traffic in North America. Last year during the same period it accounted for over 7%

“Streaming video has grown at such a rapid pace in North America that the leading service in 2015, Netflix, now has a greater share of traffic than all of streaming audio and video did five years ago,” said Dave Caputo, CEO, Sandvine. “With Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Video, and Hulu increasing their share since our last report, it further underscores both the growing role these streaming services play in the lives of subscribers, and the need for service providers to have solutions to help deliver a quality experience when using them.”