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Netflix has firmly beat BitTorrent in North America — but it’s a different story in the Asia-Pacific region.
(Credit: Netflix)
While movie studios and TV providers still continue to cry “pirate”, data from the US is proving that legal movie-streaming services can still trump illegal downloads.
Sandvine’s most recent Global Internet Phenomena Report has the video-on-demand service Netflix responsible for 33 per cent of all the peak period downstream internet traffic in North America on fixed-line connections (ie, not mobile). This has put it at the top of the Top 10, with its nearest competitor YouTube at 14.8per cent.
BitTorrent, meanwhile, was at number four, accounting for just 5.89 per cent of downstream traffic — although, in fairness, it was number one on the upstream traffic list.
In Asia-Pacific, however, the report noted that file-sharing, as a whole, was still 17.5 per cent of all download traffic.
With Australian network infrastructure being improved by the NBN and decent consumer internet speeds within sight, two of the traditional barriers for the consumption of online video service — poor bandwidth and low data caps — are being eradicated. Could a golden age of Aussie video-on-demand services be on the rise?
