The shifts in consumption of TV content continue to producing cliff hanger dramatic turns, thanks to IP networks. In the latest online traffic forecasts from Cisco, by the end of this year, there will be more mobile video viewers in North America than households that subscribe to digital TV.
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Which means digital TV audiences have switched from watching online to smartphones and tablets connected to a mobile network to watch YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon etc.
Globally, IP Video will represent 80% traffic by 2019 with more than two-thirds of global IP traffic to stem from mobile connections by 2019.
The data, which is part of Cisco’s Visual Networking Index Forecast, has solidified the growing rise of streaming services. Cisco claim that mobile video will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 10.2%, while online video, defined as any video watched on a device connected to a fixed network, like a home or office WiFi connection, will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 7.1%. Meanwhile, subscriptions to digital TV will grow at a compound annual growth rate of only 1.7%.
The dominance of Netflix traffic continues with the streaming service taking up the bandwidth |during the evening hours in North America. Sandvine statistics reveal that in its Global Internet Phenomena Report that Netflix traffic now accounts for an impressive 38.5% of all downstream bandwidth at peak times.
In other Cisco findings, consumer IP video traffic will be 84% of consumer IP traffic by 2019, up from 75% in 2014. {loadads}While business IP video traffic will be 63% of business IP traffic by 2019, up from 36% in 2014.
Meanwhile, by 2019 HD and Ultra HD (4K) internet video traffic will make up 63% of internet video traffic. With advanced internet video (HD and ultra HD) forecast to increase 8.5-fold between 2014 and 2019. A spike in installed 4K TV sets is also set to soar from 9.9M in 2014 to 371.5M by 2019.
The Cisco report warns that for service providers, the evolution of advanced video services such as ultra HD video and spherical video in addition to M2M applications will create new bandwidth and scalability requirements. Additionally continued business video adoption for services such as HD and web-based video conferencing and business VoD may also prompt greater growth in network virtualization and leveraging the internet for video transmission which will mean the new for network ramifications for SPs/OTTPs.
