A couple of weeks ago, I told you that online video had exploded in the last year. There were 10 billion video views. According to AT&T, that represents 30% of all Internet traffic. The figure is expected to grow to 80% in just two years. This has many ISPs worried that the current flood of video will turn into a tsunami and overwhelm their networks. Some are even concerned the Internet itself could be swamped by the traffic.
Much of the Internet’s video content is low definition, low resolution, and user created, but recently there has been a major push by TV networks and other content providers to add high definition TV shows and even movies. Just recently, the BBC launched an online video player. In 3 months, more then 42 million programs have been watched online. ABC now offers many of it’s most popular shows online, on demand, for free in high definition. Today, Internet service is priced by speed, but if this trend continues, ISPs may have no choice but to begin to charge based on data downloaded too.
Comment Preview