A new report from Sandvine found that real-time entertainment (primarily video) has risen to 64.5 percent of total U.S. network traffic in March from 53.6 percent last September.
YouTube accounted for 13.8 percent of total traffic in March.
Sandvine also reported last fall that half of North America’s Internet use was related to video; Netflix accounted for 27.6 percent of daily downstream volume with HTTP following at 17.8 percent, YouTube at 10.0 percent and BitTorrent coming in at 9.0 percent.
With this transition to broadband for video content, usage can become an issue for both video quality and the network. “Technical solutions such as adaptive bit-rate streaming or buffering content to a hard drive help,” GigaOM reports. “But Sandvine concludes that basic monthly usage caps, such as the ones ISPs are implementing, don’t.”
“Are caps a worrisome protectionist tool to keep subscribers locked to both broadband and pay TV subscriptions?” GigaOM asks. “And if that’s a yes, then what should the FCC, Department of Justice or Congress do about it?”
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