Video accounts for up to 60% of carrier data traffic, says report

Demand for video content remains the key driver of networks' bandwidth challenges, with video accounting for 40% to 60% of data traffic on wireless networks, says a third-quarter report from Bytemobile on the state of the mobile ecosystem.

Looking at anonymous traffic across the networks of its 125 carrier partners, the company found demand for video, in keeping with past quarters, on an "upward trajectory" and a change in users' behavior based on how optimized the network was for supporting viewing. On average, it found that mobile subscribers consume their daily video intake in a single session, clicking through an average of 10 videos. In geographies were networks were not optimized for video, subscribers watched an average 60 seconds of each video, versus 90 seconds on optimized networks. They also consumed twice as much video during off-peak hours than peak hours, when traffic was more congested.