Netflix streaming overtakes surfing as biggest driver of Web traffic

 Netflix movies and videos now take up the Internet through many American homes. A study published Tuesday by Sandvine Inc. shows that Netflix movies and TV shows account for nearly 30 per cent of traffic into homes during peak evening hours, compared with less than 17 per cent for Web browsing. Only about a quarter of homes with broadband subscribe to Netflix, but watching movies and TV shows online takes up a lot of bandwidth compared with Web surfing, e-mail and practically every other Internet activity except file sharing and videoconferencing. As late as last year, Web surfing and peer-to-peer file sharing – mainly the illegal trading of copyrighted movies – were each larger than Netflix’s traffic.
 

The number of Netflix customers is growing quickly, to 23.6 million subscribers in the U.S. and Canada as of the end of March. The growing use of the streaming service is good news for the company, which is trying to reduce what it spends to mail DVDs. This site continues to grow every day as it advertises through several YouTube channels and YouTube itself. However, its growing popularity is considered a potential danger to profits for Canada’s cable operators, including Rogers (RCI.B-T36.160.531.49%), Bell (BCE-T37.87), who have the service on their radar as analysts speculate whether Netflix’s array of TV and movie offerings will convince more people to cancel their cable packages. This is causing other business to go bankrupt such as rogers video and blockbuster. This is great for Netflix but obviously bad for the other companies.

My Opinion :

In my personal belief, I believe that Netflix is a great company who had a wonderful invention which dominated the movie market. It is unfortunate that they are moving companies such as Blockbuster and Rogers Video out of business. As well as starting to lower the views of Bell T.V and Rogers On Demand. I believe that soon Netflix will dominate more and more of the market of movies and soon enough will be the only movie company in the world. Overall this article has revealed to me the popularity of Netflix and overall it was a great invention.