Online Streaming Makes BitTorrent Drop Considerably in US, Report Claims

[Guest Ethan]

Online Streaming Makes BitTorrent Drop Considerably in US, Report Claims

A new report from policy control company Sandvine states that BitTorrent accounts less and less for the traffic generated in the US

According to the recently published research, BitTorrent only generated 9.2 per cent of peak-period traffic over the past six months, compared to 20.5 per cent in 2012 and 26.4 per cent in 2011. The company points to streaming video services such as Netflix and the likes and the fact they have made improvements in terms of availability of their subscriber-based, paid-for, on-demand content for this great drop in popularity of the controversial file sharing protocol.

“We believe as more over-the-top Real-Time Entertainment sources are made available to subscribers in the future, the rate of decline in share will begin to accelerate,” says the report.

Reportedly, Netflix managed to hold on to a leading 29 per cent peak-period traffic share in the US. YouTube came in second, but also went up 1.6 per cent this year compared to last year (from 13.8 to 15.4 per cent).

Things, however, behave differently when it comes to Europe where BitTorrent peak period traffic share remained high at 40.63 per cent and in the Asia Pacific region where BitTorrent is still the undisputed leader of traffic (because, says the report, here services like Netflix have not penetrated the market yet).

From the report: “Subscribers are likely using applications like BitTorrent to procure audio and video content not available in their region. We believe that Filesharing’s share of traffic may have finally reached its peak in terms of traffic share and will begin to experience a steady and significant decline, as paid OTT video services continue to expand their availability throughout the region.”

Last month in an interview with MotherBoard, Matt Mason, BitTorrent’s Executive Director of Marketing and Content, brought arguments on why ISPs should seriously consider to use the protocol themselves.