Netflix accounts for the most traffic in North America and is the second largest fixed traffic driver in the UK.
Netflix remains the undisputed king of bandwidth usage, accounting for 34.2% of Internet traffic in North America during evening hours – up 31.6% in the second half of 2013. The increase is attributed to the availability of high bitrate Super HD content to all Netflix subscribers in North America.
In UK and Ireland, Netflix is now the second largest source of traffic during the peak evening hours, accounting for over 17.8% of downstream fixed access traffic.
Twitch.TV, a live streaming service where video gamers watch each other play, is now among the top-15 apps on many fixed networks across the globe, and generates more traffic than HBO GO on US networks.
Sandvine predicts that live streaming of matches during the World Cup will account for over 40% of network traffic on some Latin American mobile networks.
YouTube traffic continues to rise at 18.6% share of downstream peak bandwidth in September, up from 17.1% in March. Netflix and YouTube combined together, drives more than 50% of downstream traffic on fixed networks in North America, the report said.
YouTube is big in other parts of the world too, with Europe recording 28.7% of downstream traffic, followed by 36.8% in Latin America, and 31.2% in Asia-Pacific.
Amazon Instant Video also continues to gain share, accounting for 1.9% of downstream traffic. The report notes that Amazon is now 24 times bigger than Hulu, which stands at 1.3%.
Snapchat generates more traffic than any other third-party messaging app on North American mobile networks, while African mobile network is dominated by WhatsApp, accounting for over 23% of traffic.
On several networks in Asia, third-party messaging apps such as Line or WeChat are popular, accounting for over 40% of mobile subscribers each hour.
Other findings of the report include somewhat lesser usage of peer-to-peer file-sharing apps like BitTorrent, which registers less than 10% of total daily traffic in North America.
Web browsing made up 9.7% of peak-period downstream bandwidth in the region, followed by Apple’s iTunes at 3.3%.