Netflix, the popular video streaming service that provides Americans with a great variety of video content – movies, series and documentaries included – is responsible for 35% of the total internet traffic in the United States, The Next Web reports based on a report by Sandvine, a provider of network policy control solutions for its customers. Well, almost exactly 35% – the report says that Netflix streams account for 34.39 per cent of the downstream and 9.4 per cent of the upstream bandwidth during peak periods on the United States fixed lines. The second largest downstream user of bandwidth is YouTube, with 20% of the total, the report suggests. The only service that overtakes Netflix when it comes to upstream traffic is BitTorrent, accountable for 25.49% of it in the US.
The report contains some interesting facts as well. For example, Netflix is accountable for 4% of the downstream traffic in Australia, where the service isn’t even available yet. According to the report, 2.5% of its users access Netflix streams from this country. It would be interesting for Netflix to see how many subscribers it has from countries where it is not yet available – this would offer us some insights of the inventiveness of its subscribers and the size of the web proxy market as well.
The report also states that Amazon Instant Video is the second largest paid streaming video service in the North American continent, accounting for 2.6% of the total downstream traffic. The service is growing fast, as proven by the fact that its bandwidth consumption has more than doubled in the next year and a half. At the other end of the spectrum we can find HBO Go, the subscription-based video streaming service offered by Home Box Office. Although HBO has over 50 million subscribers in the US, its streaming service is available for its paying subscribers only, and it is accountable for only 1% of the downstream internet traffic in the US. This might change with the release of the service on the Xbox One, and when the provider finally launches its standalone streaming service.