Digital content is the next big thing in the tech industry. OTT (over-the-top) services such as YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video have gained a lot of popularity in the last few years, and it continues to grow over the next few years. Openwave Mobility, the market leader in mobile data traffic management solutions, today announced the release of its Mobile Video Index report, highlighting trends and insights from over 30 live deployments globally.
In the report, Openwave Mobility said that 38% of all mobile video traffic globally is now High Definition (HD)- far beyond what mobile operators had predicted. While HD video was only 5.7 percent four years ago, it is now expected to reach at least 50 percent of video traffic by the end of 2018, reflecting the popularity of over-the-top (OTT) streaming video services such as YouTube and Netflix on mobile devices. Today, over 820 million people across the world watch YouTube and Netflix on mobile devices said Openwave Mobility in the report.
Openwave Mobility’s research is based on analysis of data aggregated from our live deployments in more than 30 mobile operators around the globe from 2013 to 2017.
The report found that three quarters (75 percent) of all mobile traffic is now encrypted and this is stifling the mobile operator’s ability to maintain subscriber Quality of Experience (QoE). This is because encryption protocols prevent operators from being able to profile or optimize data using conventional traffic management tools.
The research revealed that UDP-based encryption has also grown faster than predicted. In particular, the onslaught of Google’s QUIC protocol threatens to outpace anything the industry has seen so far. QUIC has grown at an astonishing CAGR of 284 percent – in just two years since its debut. Based on observations, Openwave Mobility predicts that by November 2018, approximately 90 percent of all mobile internet traffic will be encrypted.
John Giere, CEO of Openwave Mobility said: “OTT have launched a land grab. In 3 years OTTs wiped out voice revenues. In 2.5 years they wiped out messaging revenues. Is mobile data next? You bet. Along with encryption obscuring mobile networks, operators have to grapple with the unstoppable appetite for HD video content from OTT players.
