Increased Exclusivity Arrangements Correlates With the Reversal of a Downward Trend of File Sharing ⇥ sandvine.com

Cam Cullen of Sandvine, a network management and analytics company:

In the first Global Internet Phenomena Report in 2011, file sharing was huge on fixed networks and tiny on mobile. In the Americas, for example, 52.01% of upstream traffic on fixed networks and 3.83% of all upstream mobile traffic was BitTorrent. In Europe, it was even more, with 59.68% of upstream on fixed and 17.03% on mobile. By 2015, those numbers had fallen significantly, with Americas being 26.83% on the upstream and Europe being 21.08% on just fixed networks. During the intervening year, traffic volume has grown drastically on the upstream, with more social sharing, video streaming, OTT messaging, and even gaming on it.

That trend appears to be reversing, especially outside of the Americas. In this edition of the Phenomena report, we will reveal how file sharing is back.

From the report (PDF):

We will talk quite a bit about video in this report, but it is important to highlight the diversity of video streaming traffic around the world. Although Netflix and YouTube are still the largest names in streaming (as you will see in the reports) there is an ever growing number of other streaming providers capturing consumer screen time.

This video diversity trend has led directly to the continued relevance of file sharing, which is still a major source of internet traffic. Consumers that cannot afford to subscribe to all of the different services turn to file sharing to get the latest content, even as governments attempt to shut down sharing sites.

At about $10 per month — give or take — per subscription, those costs begin to add up quickly, especially if users are only choosing a service or channel for one or two shows. This doesn’t seem realistic or sustainable as a long-term industry plan.