In the past month, internet service provider, Vox, embarked on consumer internet usage research that revealed patterns from their fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) users. The study showed that in South Africa, Netflix was by far the favourite online streaming service platform.
According to the report released by Vox, Netflix had received more than double the hits of also a popular streaming platform, YouTube. However, Netflix was recorded as consuming 50 per cent more bandwidth than Google’s popular streaming service.
The data from the internet service provider portrayed that the current reading supported previous feedback from other ISPs, which showed that video streaming consumed a significant chunk of bandwidth on their FTTH networks.
The data showed that 54.8 per cent of usage occurred on streaming platforms. Web browsing accounted for 12.6 per cent of traffic, whilst software updates took 7.9 per cent, with online gaming sitting at 5.5 per cent. Peer to peer traffic only took up 3.5 per cent.
Historically, peer to peer was the highest traffic driver due to the existence of a variety of movie and tv show download sites such as The Pirate Bay. However, as South Africans gained increased access to global video streaming services offering good value for money, BitTorrent usage declined drastically, giving an increase to streaming traffic.
Vox’s research report also provided a breakdown of the most popular streaming services.
Global video streaming giant, Netflix, came out at the top, accounting for 37.9 per cent on distribution, followed by YouTube at 14.09 per cent. Akamaized.net accounted for 8.47 per cent.
Another streaming service focusing on bandwidth consumed was Facebook Video, followed by MultiChoice’s DStv and Instagram Video. Another critical factor to note is Showmax came at 1.16 per cent, suggesting that the platform receives 20 times less traffic than Netflix.
