Global Internet Phenomena Report

The Sandvine shines a light on fixed and mobile networks around the world, providing unparalleled insight into Internet trends and subscriber behavior patterns unravelling on networks globally. As a recognized expert in consumer traffic, Sandvine’s has been a trusted source for Internet traffic trends for over 10 years. By identifying network facts, fads, and future trends, the helps industry experts and service providers around the world forecast the evolution of network traffic and the future of the Internet as we know it.

• Netflix represented 35.2% of traffic on North American fixed networks. While this was a modest decline from the 37.1% of traffic it represented six months ago, this change is likely the result of improvements by Netflix to better compress their video library. Even with these improvements in streaming efficiency, Netflix’s traffic share on fixed networks in Latin America increased from 6.6% to 8.3%.
• Amazon Video is now the third ranked downstream application (up from eighth a year ago) in North America, accounting for 4.3% of fixed traffic. Sling TV now appears among the top 20 applications on most US networks, but still accounts for less than 1% of traffic.
• Streaming audio and video now accounts for 71% of evening traffic in North American fixed access networks. Sandvine expects this figure will reach 80% by 2020.
• Cloud Storage (Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive, etc.) has surpassed Filesharing as the largest source of upstream traffic during peak period on North American fixed access networks. BitTorrent now accounts for less than 5% of total daily traffic in the region.
• The addition of video and voice calling is driving growth in Communications apps on mobile networks in both Latin America and North America. In Latin America, WhatsApp traffic share is now 7.4%, more than triple what it was two years ago.
• In Latin America, Facebook and Google account for over 70% of total mobile traffic in the region—up from 60% reported last year.
• Over 60% of mobile traffic in both Latin America and North America is now encrypted and Sandvine predicts some networks will surpass 80% this year.