New research from Informa Telecoms & Media has revealed the full extent of the phenomenal rise in online video to the point where the vexed questions of traffic throttling and net neutrality are becoming increasingly valid.Indeed even though it considers disputes over network video usage somewhat premature right now, Inform says that such concerns will be much more justifiable over the next few years and that so-called ‘bandwidth hogs’ will be online video viewers rather than peer-to-peer users.
In its new report, ‘Congestion up ahead? Internet traffic and service forecasts, 2010-2015′, Informa calculates that overall Internet traffic will grow at just under 50% each year so that by 2015 the volume will be about seven times greater than today at 1.26 million petabytes per year.
Not surprisingly, by 2015, video will be the largest online application. Informa says that that in 2010, online video generated more traffic than peer-to-peer file-sharing for the first time ever and will grow far more quickly than peer-to-peer over the forecast period.
On what may be great news for consumer but a huge headache for network providers, Informa suggests that such consumption is the tip of the iceberg. It notes that the majority of video streams today are delivered at SD quality, to the PC. Because both HD, and delivery to connected TVs, will grow significantly over the forecast period, Informa deduces estimates that even if users watched no more video in 2015 than they do
in 2010, traffic will still have grown significantly. Pointedly, it adds that by 2015, HD video will likely have accounted for more traffic than SD video, while video direct to TVs will make up 10% of total traffic.
Even though the analyst’s most aggressive forecast assumes only a small shift in viewing in viewing from TV to online, Informa regards it as clear that even a relatively small shift will have a massive impact on traffic overall.
In a prediction that will worry content owners, Informa expects peer-to-peer to be a significant generator of video traffic, growing at around 30% each year over the forecast period, and it will continue to account for over 20% of total traffic. Informa regards it as clear that there is still a massive untapped market for peer-to-peer services in the developing Asian markets where there may be a big shift from physical, disk-based piracy to peer-to-peer usage.
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