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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 |
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Figure 1: Mobile Brand Usage
Figure 2: Mobile Broadband Devices Usage
Figure 4: Netflix Streaming on West Coast Network during Olympics
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Tag: Olympics streaming
London 2012 Summer Olympics Broadband Analytics: Mobile and Fixed Update: Week 2 Europe and North America
London 2012 Summer Olympics Broadband Analytics: APAC Chimes in
| I have talked about North America and Europe in my previous posts, but have not spent much time on Asia yet. Although Procera does not have as much coverage throughout Asia as we have in North America or Europe, some interesting tidbits have fallen out of some of our fixed and mobile deployments. APAC is a very good example of the network version of “All Politics is Local”, as what is happening in one network has no relationship to another network. General trends are great to know, but operators will find that their subscriber’s behavior does not always match the “Internet Trends”.1. On a fixed line network in an APAC country with a very active Olympics team, the volume of P2P traffic is up at the Internet peering point. However, the change is mainly in P2P Streaming applications, and the change from normal is entirely in the upload bandwidth. The upload bandwidth means that people are sharing video streams rather than just downloading them, and this spike is statistically significant, as shown in Figure 1. The most popular applications were Funshion, QVOD, PPFilm, TVU Player, and SopCast, all of which are popular P2P Video sharing applications. The interesting takeaway is that since this traffic is measured at the peering point exiting the country, the video streams are likely being consumed by people that do not have the same level of access to the broadcast or streaming video as in the originating country (re-enforcing the importance for content providers to find legitimate delivery mechanisms for their content).
2. In this same country, video traffic, just as we saw in some networks in North America, dipped on Sunday, but the climb back to normal levels was not as quick (as shown in Figure 2). However, by the end of the week, the traffic levels were above normal, as people not only returned to video streaming, but increased their consumption. The spike in video was attributed almost completely to Flash Video traffic from YouTube (which just happens to stream the Olympics for this country for the IOC. The drop in streaming was HTTP Media streams, which are popular for the IOS-based products from Apple (that do not run Flash). This likely indicates that people were not using those mobile devices as much for streaming, but were instead watching broadcast or P2P video on other devices.
3. In the “no news is good news” category, another APAC mobile operator has seen no real change in usage since the start of the Olympics. This country is not as active in the Olympics as the country discussed above, so it is likely that the viewing is small enough to not encourage users that are not already video or social networking inclined to take to their mobile devices for Olympics updates. Levels of video streaming, P2P, and web browsing are all within normal volumes.
4. In general, P2P Olympic event “availability” has grown as the Olympics has gone on. This is not a surprise, but the big events with high seeding activity (with more than 100 seeds reporting into the main torrent indexes) online include basketball, gymnastics, volleyball, and the Opening Ceremonies are also the ones that you would expect people to want to download and archive for future viewing or are high profile events that people may have missed in real-time. We will continue to hunt for interesting tidbits and report when we find them!
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Figure 1: P2P traffic on Selected Fixed APAC Network Figure 2: Video Streaming on Selected Fixed APAC Network
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London 2012 Summer Olympics Broadband Analytics: Streaming Explodes
| After a slow start on Friday and Saturday, Sunday was the day that the Olympics streaming became a force to be reckoned with.
1. In the US, several networks peaked as high as 34% of overall bandwidth and increased in volume by over 100% over the initial two days of events. Many reports detailed how people were watching one event on TV and streaming other events on PCs and tablets. Since we did not see a huge rise in the percentage of subscribers participating in the streaming events, this translates into longer streaming sessions and more sessions for each subscriber. With the NBC delaying some of the more high profile events until primetime (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/sports/olympics/nbc-olympics-delay-and-streaming-bring-complaints-on-twitter.html?partner=rss&emc=rss), streaming during these events will continue to be popular. With the results available on Twitter (the news source of choice for most high tech consumers today), Olympics viewers risk knowing the results before the broadcast, and want to see the events live. 2. In the UK, BBC iPlayer, after a slow start over the weekend, hit full stride during the GB Olympic football team match. Streaming was up over 100% over normal Sunday levels, across all platforms (IOS, Android, PC, Mac), with the Olympic streaming specifically accounting for half the traffic (which conveniently accounts for the difference from normal traffic!). The IOS platform was the most popular platform, with a 10x usage lead over Android, heavily leveraging the latest iPad platform. Since the subscribers being monitored on this mobile network are native GB residents, it is likely that this pattern will continue throughout the games during events of great interest to the British fans. This has been confirmed by BBC themselves (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jul/30/olympics-opening-ceremony-views-iplayer), claiming that Sunday was a record day for iPlayer. 3. Netflix streaming was unchanged from normal in Canada, but was down 25% in the US on Sunday from normal levels on some networks. This matches expectations, as the US is much more involved in the Olympics than Canada, and with the peak levels that we mentioned earlier for Olympics streaming, something had to give, and in this case it was Netflix. Netflix even blamed the Olympics for anticipated slower growth this quarter (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Netflix-Blames-Olympics-For-Slowing-Growth-120525). (Note: This is what was observed on Procera’s network deployments around North America). 4. Studying the usage patterns of different devices on the mobile networks, the iPhone 4 reigns as the king of usage. The average iPhone 4 user consumed more than 2x the bandwidth of an iPhone 4s user, and 3x the bandwidth of the leading Android phones (Samsung Galaxy models). The bandwidth consumption is shown in Figure 1a to the right. These numbers should change during the week as mobile devices become a primary source of Olympic updates. |
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Image 1a: Top Mobile Phone Model Comparision |
