Increasing tablet users continues to push bandwidth requirements

Tablets are appealing for many reasons, but for me, it’s mainly because: they’re extremely portable, flexible, and more compact. I remember that it wasn’t too long ago that my colleagues and I would have to lug around an entire personal computer complete with a CPU, box-like monitor, and extremely bulky mouse for our presentations and during audits. Of course, few, if any, actually still do this. And why would they, when there are already laptops and tablets available to achieve the same purpose to a better and more convenient end.

It’s no surprise that more and more users are snatching up tablets as they come. In fact, one of the most popular tablets out there is currently the iPad and iPad 2, which has garnered an impressive internet market share. But what does this mean for broadband and internet service providers?

As the number of users who use these mobile devices increases, so will the mobile data demand. In fact, a marked increase has already been noted by mobile gear maker Ericsson, who reported that mobile data demand has doubled in the last 12 months. Bytemobile has conducted their own mobile analytics called the Mobile Minute Metrics for the last quarter, reporting that users are spending more time streaming high-bandwidth content such as videos on large screen devices.

With more users accessing such content, providers can expect their networks to run overloaded, at near capacity, or even at full capacity. Broadband firms, however, sought to limit such data demands by imposing caps or limitations to the services that users can enjoy.

An additional tidbit that Bytemobile reported was that users on non-optimized networks viewed videos at an average of 60 seconds, while those who streamed content on optimized ones watched the videos for 90 seconds. This can be reasoned by the fact that optimized networks probably deliver crisper and better-quality videos.

Some other statistics reported by Bytemobile are:

- Users who stream mobile videos watch an average of 10 videos seqeuntially.
- Subscribers normally watch double the videos during off-peak hours than during peak hours.
- Mobile videos stall around 5 to 40 percent, depending on the time the content was streamed and on network conditions.

Source – Gigaom