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Allot says 42% of mobile broadband traffic comes from video
Video streaming accounts for 42 per cent of mobile bandwidth, a new report has found.
The mobile broadband solutions firm's latest MobileTrends report showed that video streaming services accounted for 42 per cent of mobile bandwidth during the second half of 2011, making it the single largest application in terms of the demand it places on mobile networks.
Over the six-month period, video streaming enjoyed significant growth, increasing by 88 per cent. This in turn helped to drive mobile data bandwidth, which rose by 83 per cent throughout the second half of the year.
During 2011 as a whole, mobile broadband traffic saw a compound annual growth rate of 234 per cent.
Just under a quarter of total bandwidth was generated by the popular video streaming service YouTube, while 14 per cent of all traffic to this website is now high-definition.
Instant messaging (IM) and voice over internet protocol (VoIP) communications technologies enjoyed substantial growth of 114 per cent, but still have "limited impact" on total bandwidth consumption, the report discovered.
Andrei Elefant, Allot's vice president of marketing and product management, commented: "The phenomenal growth of over-the-top VoIP and IM represents both a challenge and an opportunity for mobile operators.
"Intelligent, application-based data pricing is the way forward for operators, allowing them to maximise data revenues based on its true value to subscribers."
Allot's study comes in the wake of a report from Ericsson, published last November, which predicted a tenfold rise in mobile broadband traffic between 2011 and 2016, with video streaming identified as the primary driver of this growth.
Over the same period, mobile broadband subscriptions are set to rise from 900 million to almost five billion.
Johan Wibergh, head of Ericsson Business Unit Networks, said: "This report offers snapshots that, together, show how a growing number of people and businesses benefit from mobility, broadband and the cloud."