Video Generates 70% of North American Streaming Traffic

7 Dec, 2015 By: Erik Gruenwedel

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Netflix, Amazon Prime Instant Video, Hulu and YouTube dominate

People streaming movies, TV shows and user-generated content dominate North American downstream fixed broadband traffic during primetime hours — double the percentage from five years ago, according to new data from Sandvine.

Runner-up activities include Web browsing (7%), e-commerce (6.75%), social networking (5.3%) and gaming (4%), among other activities.

Among mobile users, video and audio streaming account for more than 40% of peak downstream broadband traffic.

Not surprisingly, Netflix again leads the pack in video streaming with 37% market share, up from 36.5% over the summer. YouTube was second at 17.85%, up from 15.56%; Amazon Prime Instant Video had 3.11% share, up significantly from 1.97% in June. Hulu had 2.58%, compared with 1.91% last time.

Notably, file-sharing service BitTorrent saw video traffic drop to 2.67% of downstream traffic, compared with 31% of total aggregate (including upstream) traffic in 2008.

“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,” Sandvine CEO Dave Caputo said in a statement. “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.”

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