CAPE-TOWN, South-Africa, — Sandvine, (TSX:SVC) (http://www.sandvine.com)
a leading provider of intelligent broadband network solutions for fixed and
mobile operators, today released its Internet traffic trends report,
entitled “Global Internet Phenomena Report 2H2013” (
https://www.sandvine.com/trends/global-internet-phenomena), based on data
from a selection of Sandvine’s 250-plus service provider customers spanning
North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Caribbean and Latin America
and Asia-Pacific. Sandvine’s Global Internet Phenomena Report is published
twice a year.
“For the first time ever, peer-to-peer file sharing has fallen below 10% of
total traffic in North America, which is a stark difference from the 60%
share it consumed 11 years ago,” said Dave Caputo, CEO, Sandvine. “Since
2009 on-demand entertainment has consumed more bandwidth than “experience
later” applications like peer-to-peer file sharing and we had projected it
would inevitably dip below 10% of total traffic by 2015. It’s happened much
faster. This phenomena, combined with the related rise in video
applications like Netflix and YouTube, underscores a big reason why
Sandvine’s business has grown beyond traffic management to new service
creation.”
Sandvine’s Global Internet Phenomena Report 2H2013 includes findings from
fixed and mobile networks around the world.
• Video accounts for less than 6% of traffic in mobile networks in
Africa, but is expected to grow faster than any other region before it.
• Blackberry use in Africa? Blackberry email and BBM messaging
accounts for over 13% of traffic across the continent.
• Average monthly mobile usage in Asia-Pacific now exceeds 1
gigabyte, driven by video, which accounts for 50% of peak downstream
traffic. This is more than double the 443 megabyte monthly average in North
America.
• In Europe, Netflix, less than two years since launch, now
accounts for over 20% of downstream traffic on certain fixed networks in
the British Isles. It took almost four years for Netflix to achieve 20% of
data traffic in the United States.
• Instagram and Dropbox are now top-ranked applications in many
regions across the globe. In mobile networks in Latin America, Instagram,
due to the recent addition of video, is now the 7th top ranked downstream
application, making it a prime candidate for inclusion in tiered data plans
which are popular in the region.
• Netflix (31.6%) holds its ground as the leading downstream
application in North America and together with YouTube (18.6%) accounts for
over 50% of downstream traffic on fixed networks.
• P2P Filesharing now accounts for less than 10% of total daily
traffic in North America. Five years ago it accounted for over 31%.
“You have to be in Africa to understand Africa. Sandvine now has customers
in 20 countries within Africa and we are pleased to include truly
representative data on this high-growth market in this year’s report,” said
Mr. Caputo. “The African market is especially unique, as most users are
connecting to the Internet for the first time through mobile devices, and
using applications like Skype, Facebook and WhatsApp. In other parts of the
world, new users have first connected to the Internet via a fixed line.
While video is a small part of mobile bandwidth in the region today, we
predict Africa will be the fastest video adopter and operators will respond
with creative device-and application-based service tiers.”
Check out Sandvine’s Internet Phenomena blog (
http://www.betterbroadbandblog.com) on a regular basis for the latest
trends, predictions and phenomena impacting Internet usage around the world.