Category: EMEA

European Mobile Broadband Analytics: Netflix in Sweden

October 31st, 2012 by Cam Cullen
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    As most of you know, Procera has a large engineering team in Sweden, and the recent launch of Netflix there has been greeted with some enthusiasm. I discovered a very interesting fact when I went to Sweden last week – if you have a US-based account, when in Sweden it will allow you to view content streamed from Netflix. The titles that you are presented with will be the content that Netflix has licensed in that territory, as shown here.

    As I was enjoying optionally subtitled movies (Swedish, Danish and Norwegian options if I recall correctly) on my iPad over the hotel Wi-Fi, I decided to take a look and see if Netflix is being used on the mobile networks in Sweden. There are some pretty hefty sized volume plans available in Sweden (I have seen ones as high as 80GB per month), which is plenty of data room for video streaming. Sure enough, there is quite a bit of Netflix on the mobile networks, but it is still just getting started. The graph below shows the differnet device types and a comparison of the volume of Netflix used per device:

    Mobile Broadband dongles lead the way (as they do on most networks worldwide), but the iPhone and iPad have a very solid presence on the list, as does a Samsung and HTC handset. As a percentage of total traffic, Netflix is still small (and smaller than file sharing in Scandinavia), but it will be interesting to see how this grows over time. I have always been an believer that finding a way to make your content available on-line is the best way to prevent or minimize piracy, and we will continue to watch as Netflix expands and how that affects the rate of file sharing in different countries.

    Middle East Mobile Broadband Traffic Analytics: Summer Traffic Survey

    September 17th, 2012 by Cam Cullen
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      The Middle East is forecast to have a very high growth rate over the next few years for broadband networks, especially in the mobile area. Portio Research reports that Egypt, Oman and Sudan are the Top 3 fastest growing mobile markets worldwide based on their Worldwide Mobile Industry Handbook 2011-2016. IDC reports that the number of mobile subscribers in the Middle East will approach 271M by the end of 2012 (report here) with mobile penetration topping 100% in 2012. Informa released a report on the regional share for mobile subscribers, with Iran and Saudi Arabia leading the way for the region.

      Procera has been working with a number of mobile operators in the Middle East, and our findings are that the usage patterns for Middle Eastern mobile operators is similar to other regions, but that the number of “power users” is much lower – which usually translates to a lower number of smartphones and mobile broadband dongles. The statistics below represent an aggregation of that data across specific operators that Procera is working with. We believe strongly that “All network trends are local”, and detailed analytics on YOUR network are what help network operators build profitable service models, and encourage operators to gain insight into their subscriber’s behavior before creating new services.

      However, many trends in the Middle East have similar traffic distributions as other regions. For example, the domains visited on Middle Eastern mobile networks are very similar to what you might see on mobile networks around the world. The chart below shows the top sites visited over the past two months on the mobile network, from a traffic as well as total number of connections:

      It is not a surprise that Facebook, Google (including local versions of Google), and several CDNs (Amazon and Akamai) lead the way in total traffic volume – which shows that content really is king in the Middle East as well as the rest of the world. From a connections point of view, Facebook is still the number one by far, with Zynga making an appearance as a social gaming powerhouse, and Google maintaining a strong position due to searches and advertising.

      From an application point of view, Streaming Video is at the top of the heap from an overall bandwidth usage as well for different types of applications used by mobile subscribers.

      Drilling down into specific applications, Streaming Media applications again take top honors, but as seen by Facebook’s position in the website table, HTTP browsing is not far behind.

      Drilling down into Streaming Video specifically, Flash Video (for non-IOS phones) and HTTP Media Streaming (used primarily by IOS) are the top applications, which is consistent with other regions that do not have Netflix or similar video streaming services..

      The Middle East is a rapidly growing mobile data market, and many operators are reporting mobile data traffic growth in excess of 100% a year (even with penetration passing 100%!). The introduction of LTE into many countries will only increase that growth, and the ability of the mobile operators to create service plans targeted to consumer application and content trends will increase their revenue AND enhance subscriber satisfaction.

      London 2012 Summer Olympics Broadband Analytics: Mobile and Fixed Update: Week 2 Europe and North America

      August 12th, 2012 by Cam Cullen
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        Some more interesting data to share on European mobile traffic and North America fixed line networks and usage (ironic since I am actually in Europe this week!). I will have an update covering the lessons learned from the Olympics later this week.

         

        1.  For a European mobile network, a survey during the Olympics (but not focused on Olympics traffic specifically) on different handset types usage over the second week of the Olympics revealed that for handsets, Apple users consume more total volume than any other handset, with Samsung users being very close behind (Figure 1).  For tablets, the iPad (new) followed by the iPad 2 and the original iPad had the most usage per device. For mobile broadband dongles, Huawei modems used far more per device than any other type, with 6 of the top 10 broadband modem models being Huawei (Figure 2).

         

        2 & 3. As a follow-up on Netflix, we are finding that there are regional as well as size variances with the peak Netflix consumption. An East Coast site (Figure 3) showed a significant drop in Netflix peak rates (the totals show are the peak rates for each day). However, a West Coast site (Figure 4) showed very little variance in Netflix during the entire Olympics run. The interesting fact about both sites is that the total video consumed across all sites does not increase at all, with all types of video (Netflix, YouTube, HTTP Media Streaming) remaining proportional across all sites. It also follows that the less bandwidth and subscribers that exist on a network, the more susceptible it is for dramatic changes in video streaming. With around 5% of broadband subscribers on most cable and DSL networks taking advantage of Netflix on a weekly basis (average across the Procera footprint), a small number of subscribers partaking in other forms of entertainment (as we saw on the first Sunday of the Olympics) can have a significant impact on the total consumption.

         

        3. There have been some really good other studies done on the impact of the Olympics. Some recommended ones are:

        BBC Study for how the Olympics has been viewed on their site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2012/08/olympic_statistics_traffic_week.html

        Google Analytics on searches for Olympics: http://googlemobileads.blogspot.com/2012/08/going-for-mobile-gold-10x-increase-in.html

        		  

        Figure 1: Mobile Brand Usage

        Figure 2: Mobile Broadband Devices Usage



        Figure 3: Netflix Streaming on East Coast Network during Olympics

        Figure 4: Netflix Streaming on West Coast Network during Olympics

         
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