Sandvine: Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon & Netflix generate almost 57% of Internet traffic

Sandvine’s newly released 2022 “Global Internet Phenomena Report” aggregates data from more than 160 Tier 1 and Tier 2 fixed and mobile networks worldwide to reveal unprecedented trends, such as:

• Rapid growth of 1Terabyte per month “heavy app users,” a trend that is expected to accelerate with the transition from 4G to 5G and the explosion of video everywhere across social, gaming, messaging, and immersive experiences;

• First-time “tipping of the scales,” with Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Netflix generating almost 57% of Internet traffic – more than everyone else, combined;

• QUIC [1.] multiplexed transport, encryption, and privacy protocols like Apple iCloud Private Relay obscuring network visibility for capacity planning and congestion management;

Note 1. QUIC  is a Transport layer protocol used by more than half of all connections from the Chrome web browser to Google’s servers.  Microsoft Edge and Firefox browsers also support it.

• Mashups of videos, payments, maps, chat, and other features increasing the need for more sophisticated machine learning techniques to measure and deliver optimal app quality of experience (QoE);

• Global rankings of “Top-10 Apps” in Video, Gaming, Social, Messaging, Enterprise Conferencing, with Google’s YouTube retaining the top spot in global app traffic share at 14.67% followed by Netflix at 9.39%, as well as other downstream/upstream and regional trends (Americas, EMEA, and APAC).

Samir Marwaha, Chief Strategy Officer, Sandvine said: “Our latest ‘Global Internet Phenomena Report’ shows that people care more about how their favorite apps perform than the underlying networks. This makes it crucial that 5G and Cloud service providers understand, at a granular level, the application quality of experience they are delivering to customers. That’s going to have the greatest impact on their brands and their ability to generate revenue streams within new business models.”

Gabriel Brown, Principal Analyst, Mobile Networks and 5G, Heavy Reading said:

“The top content producers serving more traffic and accounting for a greater share of network load has a big impact, but at least it is a known quantity. The other part of the story is the increasing diversity of traffic sources – from new streamers, live sports, gaming, and device updates – and the growth of complex apps that combine multiple traffic types and services in a single customer experience. In combination with the rise of QUIC and iCloud Private Relay, this is challenging operators to better understand where and when traffic originates. Insight into these emerging patterns can help operators manage network capacity and meet customer expectations.”

Get the Report and on-demand Webinar to see the hottest trends and insights derived from more than 2.5 billion internet subscribers. Also, check out other resources, such as our 5G Service Innovation and Intelligence Whitepaper5G Service Intelligence Engine (NWDAF) Whitepaper,  Cloud-Ready Options, and Use Cases eBook.

About Sandvine:
Sandvine’s cloud-based Application and Network Intelligence portfolio helps customers analyze, optimize, and monetize application experiences using contextual machine learning-based insights and real-time actions. Market-leading classification of more than 95% of traffic across mobile and fixed networks by user, application, device, and location significantly enhances interactions between users and applications. For more information about delivering superior quality of experience with uniquely rich, real-time data that can drive performance and revenues, visit http://www.sandvine.com or follow Sandvine on Twitter @Sandvine.

Media Contact:
Susana Schwartz, Sandvine +1 816 680 1447 [email protected]

Source: Sandvine

References:

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sandvines-2022-global-internet-phenomenon-report-reveals-explosion-in-heavy-app-usage-and-app-complexity-with-video-everywhere-301471273.html

https://www.sandvine.com/global-internet-phenomena-report-2022?hs_preview=khpPseNo-62343537839

One thought on “Sandvine: Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon & Netflix generate almost 57% of Internet traffic

  1. Similarly, Google, Meta, Microsoft & Amazon use 66% of the world’s undersea fiber-optic capacity! The four tech giants increasingly dominate the internet’s critical cable infrastructure

    Fiber-optic cable, which carries 95% of the world’s international internet traffic, links up pretty much all of the world’s data centers, those vast server warehouses where the computing happens that transforms all those 1s and 0s into our experience of the internet.

    Where those fiber-optic connections link up countries across the oceans, they consist almost entirely of cables running underwater—some 1.3 million kilometers (or more than 800,000 miles) of bundled glass threads that make up the actual, physical international internet. And until recently, the overwhelming majority of the undersea fiber-optic cable being installed was controlled and used by telecommunications companies and governments. Today, that’s no longer the case.

    In less than a decade, four tech giants— Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, Meta (formerly Facebook ) and Amazon —have become by far the dominant users of undersea-cable capacity. Before 2012, the share of the world’s undersea fiber-optic capacity being used by those companies was less than 10%. Today, that figure is about 66%.

    By building their own cables, the tech giants are saving themselves money over time that they would have to pay other cable operators. That means the tech companies don’t need to operate their cables at a profit for the investment to make financial sense.
    The ability of these companies to vertically integrate all the way down to the level of the physical infrastructure of the internet itself reduces their cost for delivering everything from Google Search and Facebook’s social networking services to Amazon and Microsoft’s cloud services. It also widens the moat between themselves and any potential competitors.

    “You have to imagine this investment will ultimately make them more dominant in their industries, because they can provide services at ever-lower costs,” says Mr. Meltzer.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-amazon-meta-and-microsoft-weave-a-fiber-optic-web-of-power-11642222824

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