Netflix Using One-Third of Increasingly Crowded Internet

According to a new report from Canadian tech company, Sandvine, the Internet is growing at an astonishing rate. Sandvine puts out its annual "Global Internet Phenomena Report," and this year estimated that U.S. data consumption had grown 120 percent.

Moreover, the percentage of Internet traffic was devoted to what they call real time entertainment - video streaming. This past year, one-third of all real time was grabbed by one company - Netflix - with that share expected to grow to 10 times the total of all others. By 2015, Sandvine expects that real time entertainment will grow to over 80 percent of Internet use.

But as congested as the Internet is in North America and Europe, it's been outstripped by growth in Asia. "According to the study," wrote The Washington Post, "people there consumed 659 MB of data per month, up 10 percent over the same period last year."

This growth presents a challenge. Sandvine expects that "... even with high-speed LTE networks launching and expanding across the world, wireless networks will still face congestion problems as mobile device use increases -- particularly on tablets."

Global Internet Phenomena Report: 2H 2012 summary (Sandvine, Nov. 2012)

Internet data usage jumps; Netflix makes up one-third of bandwidth use (Washington Post, Nov. 7, 2012)