[hugh]

Global Internet video traffic will surpass global peer-to-peer traffic by the end of 2010 Cisco Systems’ third annual Visual Networking Index Forecast.

This will mark the first time in the last 10 years that peer-to-peer traffic will not be the largest Internet traffic type

 

[hugh]

This is significant because how will ISP rationalize throttling in the future.

Throttling P2P slows the download, throttling Video means you can't watch which will anger a lot of people

 

[ScaryBob]

Unfortunately, ISPs will still rationalize throttling (and other limitations) in Canada. That is due to the fact that the communications backbones are all owned by businesses that own both ISPs and BDUs. As long as Bell, Rogers, Shaw, Telus, etc. continue to own most of the major ISP and BDU backbones, plus broadcasting businesses, they will see internet video as a threat to their core business model and will take measures to restrict it. Unlike the US, which has enacted policies to restrict such anti-competitive practices, the Canadian government seems to be Ok with the perception of competition while consumers have little protection.

 

[nakedgord]

^
Agreed Bob. That makes it all the more important for people to oppose this by buying as little from the incumbents as possible. Even if Public Mobile, Wind etc isn't in your market at least go with a cell reseller like PC or Speakout. Same thing for internet or TV options (albeit the few there are).

 

[Proteosome]

I think there is a direct correlation with a drop in P2P video traffic and the rise of "legal" video traffic.

Make it available and they will come. The music industry faced the same issue and didn't see a drop until music was readily available for sale online at a reasonable price. Video is now going through the same renaissance (albeit with the expected holdouts still clinging to the old business models).

Oh, and my 60GB cap is going to need to go up to handle all the video streamed, downloaded, uploaded...

 

[99semaj]

I think this trend really validates what many have been saying wrt to streaming taking over from optical disc. While Blu-ray may have a home for the high quality packaged media market, those people less concerned with quality may just jump to online options when they upgrade from DVD.

 

[nakedgord]

^
Honesty I don't think many will migrate from DVD to anything unless they're forced to do so by the studios fading out the format.

And even then I could see some going to BR, some to online and others won't migrate at all and just stop buying ala cart content and sticking with the channels on their TV from a BDU or OTA.

Personally I'm hoping they'll keep DVD as the "low rent" format to snag those who are to cheap to pay for anything nicer like on BR etc.

 

[U]

I have to respectfully disagree with most of you guys... ISPs were able to rationalize throttling P2P because it was a significant amount of traffic but it was also used only by a small fraction of their subscriber base (I recall seeing like 5 or 10% in the CRTC case notes). This is key. Video is a whole different beast. I have no stats to prove it but I'll make an educated guess and say that the majority of the ISPs users download some form of video on a daily basis.

I think we'll see ISPs adapt in a few ways:

• Further distribution of video content. I.e., bring the video closer to the users. For example my ISP (Bell) now serves YouTube traffic directly from their network. I assume they must have some sort of deal with Google (and maybe other ISPs do it too). This doesn't reduce video consumption from a user perceptive but it does reduce WAN traffic which means savings for the ISP.
• For live video I'm hoping to see ISPs adopt multicasting in the future (it's been around forever). This would mean that ISPs only have to carry one stream which usually gets replicated at the edge near the users. Again, no reduction from a user perspective but lots of savings on the big pipes.
• Last but not least is usage based billing. We are talking about greedy telcos and cablecos here so worse case they'll happily carry the video traffic, beef up their infrastructure accordingly and send the bill back to the users...

 

[ScaryBob]

Further distribution of video content. I.e., bring the video closer to the users. For example my ISP (Bell) now serves YouTube traffic directly from their network.

This can also be done with caching. The big issue I have with ISPs getting into deals like this one is that they now become essentially a web broadcaster. Then we see a situation where consumers only see what their ISP wants them to see. For example, Bell redirects MSN.com requests to their own MSN.ca site (at one time essentially making MSN.com unavailable to Canadians.) I tried to access Ten network in Australia once. That was a failure because it was being blocked by DNS redirection (presumably by Canwest who owned a majority interest.)