BBC iPlayer Bumps Usage of Streaming by 62% in one Month

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Tuesday - May 13, 2008

Timely analyst thought pieces on issues pertaining to digital media, home networks, and consumer electronics.

BBC iPlayer Bumps Usage of Streaming by 62% in one Month
Author: Michael Wolf, Research Director, Digital Home
Wed, 9 Apr 2008 10:11:06 EDT

The launch of the iPlayer from the BBC is a great controlled experiment, because its a fairly ubiquitous launch in the UK since it left beta in December of 2007. Early indications were that it had done well from the very beginning, and now this blog from UK ISP Plus.Net show that traffic has spiked significantly this year. The per-user streaming of video went from 180 MB in December to 292 MB in January, a 62% increase. Definitely eye-popping. Another interesting stat is the fact that streams outnumber downloads by an 8 to 1 margin. I think this shows that when faced with the choice between a viable streaming option (meaning good quality) vs. download, many will choose the stream rather than encumber their hard drive and have to wait for the full download. This is, in my opinion, where music and video usage really part ways, because consumers have really shown a preference for ownership of the music vs. a more temporal (streamed) relationship, while with video they are happy to say hello and goodbye fairly quickly.

Perhaps most interesting is the claim by Plus.net that the cost of streaming traffic has tripled in the same time frame. If anything is going to push the discussions around Net Neutrality forward quickly its those types of numbers, because I am certain that the type of behavior we've seen from Comcast around bandwidth throttling in the U.S. recently will only become more common if those numbers hold true across the pond. Clearly the move towards FTTX, DOCSIS 3.0 or whatever solution brings fatter pipes is going to be needed as the video is coming, and as we've seen in the UK, the consumers are changing their behavior very quickly when given choice and quality online.

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