Netflix Hours Streamed Exceeds World Population
posted Sunday Sep 28, 2014 by Nicholas DiMeo
Two years ago, we mentioned that Netflix eclipsed one billion hours of streaming in a single month. Since that time, that number has steadily increased. Now, a new study has shown that Netflix users take binge watching to the extreme.
The Diffusion Group, a research and analysis firm, said that Netflix customers are streaming at an increased rate of 350 percent over the last ten quarterly measurements. To put that into perspective, users are now watching an average of 93 minutes per day, equating to 45GB of data gobbled up each month.
TDG added to the report, using Netflix's streaming volume data, that across the board the total number of hours watched per month exceeds the number of people on the planet. Over 7 billion hours of Netflix is streamed each month and that number has seen roughly a 2.5 percent increase each quarter since January of 2013.
What can attribute to the growing success of the company, even though businesses like FiOS and Comcast are throttling service? Since 2013, Netflix has been expanding across the globe. That month of January in 2013 is pretty significant for the company, as that was a time where 94 percent of all Netflix traffic came from the US. However as Netflix has grown internationally, as of the summer of this year, that number has dropped to only 72 percent. Countries like Germany and France have openly adopted the video-streaming service and are heavily on board.
It's also interesting to note that US customers stream their content at a rate of only 2.57Mbps - about 1GB of data consumed per hour - and if the FCC has its way, that number may sadly decrease unless you pay more per month to your ISP. Also, considering that in order to watch Netflix in Super HD you need between 6 and 8Mbps, it pains me to know most users aren't enjoying their movie-watching experience to its fullest potential.
