By Ronny Haraldsvik
The growth of mobile video traffic is rapidly outpacing that of overall data traffic. And unless operators are able to intelligently manage network capacity through data reduction and related technologies, the explosion of multimedia content will continue to eat away at their ability to monetize of data services.
In January, The New York Times reported that people watched 60 billion videos on YouTube each month — or 730 billion videos throughout the year. The average Internet user watched 186 videos each month. The same week that the article appeared, YouTube announced that 200 million videos per day are being played on mobile devices – up 300 percent from January 2010.
Bytemobile’s Mobile Minute Metrics reports over the last five quarters illustrate that video became the dominant form of mobile data traffic in 2010 –accounting for an average of 40 percent of the total volume in wireless networks worldwide.
In fact, with the rise of full-length and studio-quality videos and live streaming of multimedia content on mobile devices – as well as the emergence of personal two-way video communications, or “video chat" –mobile data traffic to spike to an all-time high in 2011, causing tremendous capacity strain on already challenged network resources.
Bytemobile anticipates the following developments in the coming year:
- Video-based content will account for over 60 percent of network traffic – up from 40 percent in 2010 – and two-way video chat will dominate network capacity
- 10 percent of subscribers will generate 90 percent of total network traffic
- Pressure on capacity will continue to increase with LTE and other 4G network roll-outs, due to subscriber consumption of all available bandwidth
Small Increase in Video Resolution – Significant Increase in Data Traffic
Increased demand on capacity requires greater control of networks and the ability to gauge the quality of subscribers’ mobile video experience. Operators need to examine data rates, resolution and stalling in order to ensure service quality and consistency, reduce churn, and plan tiered services for different subscriber profiles.
Operators will continue to implement various data offload and small cell technologies to meet escalating demand. They will also deploy “smart capacity" solutions in their networks to better utilize existing capacity and increase customer satisfaction.
