What is in this article?:
What we’ve learned from this past year is that consumers want to watch video in places other than their living room.
Video on demand, everywhere
New research from Bell Labs, the research arm of Alcatel-Lucent, predicts that increasing consumption of video content on mobile devices will push the wired broadband networks that carry this traffic to their absolute limits over the next decade. Bell Labs projections suggest that, by 2020, consumers in the United States alone will access seven hours of video each day — as opposed to 4.8 hours today, and will increasingly consume this additional video on tablets, both at home and on the go.
Significantly, the research also points to a dramatic shift in viewing habits, as consumers switch from broadcast content to video-on-demand services, which will grow to 70 percent of daily consumption, compared with 33 percent today.
The projections also suggest a 12X increase in Internet video content as cloud services, news sites and social networking applications become more video-based, and continuously accessible anywhere, anytime on tablets, smart phones and computers.
“Delivery of video from the cloud and from content delivery networks to tablets, TVs and smartphones — with guaranteed quality — presents an exciting new revenue opportunity for communications service providers,” said Marcus Weldon , Chief Technology Officer, Alcatel-Lucent, “but only if they are prepared to take advantage of it. Left unmanaged, the rapid growth in video traffic can turn into a deluge and spell disaster.”
