Friend and Foe

At least publicly, cable ops have focused on the silver lining inherent to the stiff competition coming from Netflix and other OTT plays, namely that subs must use their broadband service to access video Websites. Sandvine, though, used its own data to pooh-pooh that stance, saying cable ops are losing valuable network capacity (and not just cord-cutting customers) to Netflix as the service represents 21% of US downstream Web traffic during peak times and is heaviest from 8-10pm. The firm added that Netflix is a major source of content in the real-time ent segment, which in North America accounts for nearly 43% of peak period traffic on fixed data access networks and more than 41% on mobile networks. Per that segment data, forget silver. It illustrates a potential gold mine for cable programmers, particularly when looking at YOY  trending on both platforms. As most content segments decreased in popularity since last year on each platform, peak traffic for real-time ent surged and remains comfortably ahead of its nearest competition, Web browsing. Cable broadband providers surely welcome any traffic increase, but must wish for flagging Netflix usage. See the charts below for more info.