Video Continues to Drive Broadband Usage

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Video Continues to Drive Broadband Usage

	By Doug Dawson President at CCG Consulting
	February 09, 2022 Views: 9,102 Add Comment

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Nielsen recently published some statistics about how we watch videos that show a continuing trend of migration from traditional video to watching video online.

One of the most striking statistics is the total volume of online videos. December 2021 saw an aggregate of 183 billion minutes of online video viewing. And even that, the number is likely small since there are many uses of video on the web that are not likely counted in the total. The prior largest months for video volumes was 178 billion minutes in November 2021 and 160 billion minutes in March 2020, the first month of the pandemic.

Here is a comparison of the video usage by category. Cable means video delivered by a wired cable provider or satellite service like DirecTV. Streaming is all sources of online content like Netflix. Broadcast is watching video using an antenna. Other is an all-inclusive category that includes things like gaming, DVDs, and video on demand.

	May 2021	Dec 2021
Cable	39%	37%
Streaming	26%	28%
Broadcast	25%	26%
Other	9%	9%

Nielsen has been tracking these numbers for many years. There has been a steady migration from traditional cable viewing to both streaming and broadcast viewing as millions of homes are dropping traditional cable each year. The other category has also been growing, fueled by the explosive growth of online gaming.

Nielsen also reported on the market share of each of the major online video services. The following percentages represent the share that each service has of all online video content. It’s impressive to see that 6.4% of all video content is delivered by Netflix. It’s also impressive to see Disney+ grew so large after having just launched at the end of 2019.

Netflix	6.4%
YouTube	5.8%
Hulu	3.0%
Prime Video	2.1%
Disney+	1.6%
All Other	8.8%

I’m writing about this topic to remind how many minutes of video usage is still carried by traditional cable TV and broadband TV. In December, 242 billion minutes of content were delivered by traditional cable TV and another 170 billion minutes delivered by broadcast using antennas. Over time, more and more of these minutes will migrate online and is one of the primary driving factors behind the continued explosive growth where broadband networks have been seeing a doubling of overall bandwidth used about every three years. The trends identified by Nielsen mean that ISPs can’t expect any break in that growth for the foreseeable future, likely well into the next decade.

By Doug Dawson, President at CCG Consulting

Dawson has worked in the telecom industry since 1978 and has both a consulting and operational background. He and CCG specialize in helping clients launch new broadband markets, develop new products, and finance new ventures.

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