Bored binge-watchers bork beleaguered broadband by blasting bandwidth: Global average speeds down 6.31% Video-streaming binges as a result of the coronavirus lockdown have flooded broadband networks and led to a reduction in connection speeds. This was confirmed by Cable.co.uk, which analysed a pool of 364 million speed tests pulled from 114 countries to determine that in nearly every region of the world, average speeds were …
The actual data came from measurement lab and is open for anyone you don't need to use their report
you can test yourself here :
https://speed.measurementlab.net/
its actually interesting to see what people get
the data is actually here with a map already :
https://datastudio.google.com/s/tA4mKm65BqY
John Jones
Actually, having read through the report and methodology, it's clear that a LOT of work went into this. Just because the data is open-source does not mean doing something like this is in any way easy or quick. Read their methodology and think about how long it takes to produce a reliable analysis in 114 countries.
I'm thinking that a major part of the slowdown is also due to overselling connections, ie providers that sell "up to" a given bandwidth, gambling on the fact that, generally, nobody is going to use it all at a sustained rate.
Well we needed it all for the past six months, and we're going to continue to need it for the foreseeable future.
Methinks that, after the pandemic has finally been vanquished, we're going to see a change in the way providers offer connectivity in addition to all the changes that are becoming apparent in our society.
To me, the interesting message is between the lines, i.e. where do people go for video entertainment?
It is clearly NOT broadcast TV anymore, even with DVRs, Freeview recording on USB sticks, etc.
I see it in my own household, where the default is Netflix or Prime and the only thing we still watch at the programmed time on TV is the news. On the odd occasion we want to watch a film or programme on a channel that is not the BBC, we record or time shift it to avoid the ads.
The pandemic has perhaps accelerated or at least highlighted this seismic shift!
AndrueC How long till they have modify their plus boxes to make the ad's unskippable?
Pretty much why I never watch 4oD or ITV hub. Youtube on anything but a PC (thanks ublock Origin) is starting to get annoying as well since the double adverts were introduced and the frequency increase once they kicked off a bunch of revenue generating content creators.
AndrueC How long till they have modify their plus boxes to make the ad's unskippable?
The only change they've made in that respect over the last almost-twenty-years has been to implement skip-30-seconds, making jumping past adverts easier. Admittedly it took many years before they finally did it (had to wait until Sky Q was released) but the evidence is that Sky are fairly happy to allow their subscribers to jump over adverts.
What the other broadcasters who use their platform think I don't know. A lot of them don't have adverts on their catch-up service although that might be because it's easier to just make the original source material available without trying to insert adverts. Whatever the reason in a lot of cases the best way to avoid adverts altogether is to use the corresponding catch-up service so it doesn't seem like most broadcasters are bothered.
For me the biggest revelation of lockdown has been, after years of being absolutely insistent that I wouldn't be interested in any content on there, YouTube.
I've become slightly obsessed with watching Techmoan playing obscure tape formats, Retromancave restoring old computers and 8 Bit Show and Tell breaking into the monitor and explaining how a misunderstood Commodore 128 BASIC command works by looking at the underlying machine code, then stumbling on up and coming 'tubers who are also posting some amazing obscure content.
"I see it in my own household, where the default is Netflix or Prime and the only thing we still watch at the programmed time on TV is the news."
It's the opposite here. We set series links on VM across our subscribed channels and that covers much of what we watch. We have a bottom-end Netflix sub, but I find that after a few months of watching stuff, it rapidly tails off to "not much new that we want". A while back, my wife took a free months trial of Amazon Prime. Hated their interface, not only hard to browse, but it's interspersed with rows of of stuff not available without paying more. Although, like you, we rarely watch "live" other than the news.
Thousands simultaneously consuming their own copy of the latest dystopian CGI bonanza is the pinnacle of human consumerism. It is completely idiotic and burns bandwidth like it has no impact.
Broadcasting, multicasting or manycasting these things would make some sense. What we are doing now is pure stupidity (engineering and resource wise)
Video on the internet should be timeslot based multicasting! (I. E. Wait 5 minutes for your multicasting slot to start)
Considering the unimaginable overnight shift in how we use "The Internet", a dip in average speeds of just 1.7% is a pleasant surprise in my opinion.
Aye, I know it's sacrilege to publicly praise a UK telco, and I know we should expect a healthy level of resiliency baked-in for “unforeseen events” in our critical infrastructure. Arguably, this situation has tested and proven the infrastructure to be not nearly as bad as we all suspected it to be.
I can’t help but feel we should be praising their engineers/teccies who kept this all going (despite years of poor manglement), with only a slight dip in performance which the vast majority won’t have even noticed in practice.
I can’t help but feel we should be praising their engineers/teccies who kept this all going (despite years of poor manglement), with only a slight dip in performance which the vast majority won’t have even noticed in practice.
Especially for the bargain basement prices consumers are prepared to pay. The profit margins on being a residential CP are pretty small. It amazes me that UK telcos can justify any kind of upgrade programme. I've long assumed that BT only does it in order to retain the value of their local loop in the face of the mobile onslaught. Basically 'upgrade or become irrelevant'.
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