Telecom Lead India: Video streaming has emerged as the
biggest contributor to broadband Internet traffic across network of Calix’s
customer, according to Calix U.S. Rural Broadband Report.
The report suggests that this trend will continue to grow
in future quarters.
Video streaming accounted for 67 percent of downstream
Internet traffic and 13 percent of upstream traffic in the studied networks.
Large content distribution networks (CDNs) such as
Level3, Limelight, and Akamai — which carry video content from sites like
Netflix and YouTube — accounted for 80 percent of all streamed video traffic.
Service providers in the U.S that offer Internet services
exclusively over fiber access networks saw subscribers generate over 2.67 times
more traffic than service providers that offered Internet services over
copper-based networks.
The top five percent of subscribers in the rural U.S.
networks studied used more than 100 GB of downstream traffic a month, and
accounted for approximately 50 percent of Internet traffic.
In terms of upstream traffic, business services
generated the most, accounting for 53 percent of all upstream traffic.
The report revealed that the west region of the U.S. in
Q4 streamed video more heavily than other regions. The Southeast region
played the most online video games, whereas, the Northeast region shopped
online more heavily than other regions.
The Midwest region of the U.S used business-oriented
services in the home most frequently.
The study is based on analysis of data aggregated from 45
U.S. communications service providers. Report data was drawn from actual
Internet traffic monitored in U.S. service provider networks from the fourth
quarter (October through December) of 2011.
“This level of insight into the bandwidth drivers of
rural U.S. broadband networks provides both Calix and our service provider
customers a powerful tool for network planning and transformation
projects,” said Miguel Alonso, Calix vice president of software
products.
