Do you still use Netflix? You are not alone. Despite the streaming video service's problems in the past several months, the amount of bandwidth that can be tracked to users of the Netflix service continues to increase. A new study by Sandvine reports that Netflix user now accounts for "32.7 (percent) of peak downstream traffic." here in the US. That's an increase from 29.7 percent from the company's last broadbard study last May.
It shows that people like the convenience of Netflix' all-you-can-watch video streaming service, even if the management of the company continue to make dumb decisions like hike the price of its hybrid streaming-DVD mail order service. Perhaps more importantly, it makes the case for users to have access to Internet access that are not bound by broadband caps.
Many major Internet providers now either cut off Internet access to customers who go over their data caps or charge them extra from going over those limits. With customers using bandwidth intensive applications such as Netflix more and more, it becomes harder to justify those broadband limits.
Hopefully those ISPs will realize that in order to provide access to popular bandwidth heavy applications like Netflix, they need to relax their policies of overcharging their customers or even cutting off access altogether. Otherwise the next company who wants to provide a service that makes customers use lots of bandwidth won't even bother launching.
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