Report: Demand, network congestion beget video stalling

The late evening hours are peak times for mobile video demand as well as mobile social networking, according to Citrix Systems' latest ByteMobile Mobile Analytics Report, which noted average mobile video download performance drops by 30 percent during the peak hours of service.

"We observed that subscribers generate greater demand for mobile video in the late evening hours of 10 to 11 p.m., which coincides with a social networking busy hour of 10 p.m., and differs from the 4 p.m. busy hour for consuming news, weather and maps," said Chris Koopmans, vice president and general manager of service provider platforms at Citrix, which purchased mobile Web optimization firm Bytemobile in June.

Mobile video consumption is fairly consistent during waking hours and makes up the majority of total data traffic on networks worldwide, with an average of 50 percent across all regions, according to Citrix' fourth-quarter 2012 report. The report is generated from Smart Capacity Mobile Analytics, the company's mobile data traffic reporting solution used by Tier 1 operators around the globe.

The report revealed that North America and Europe show similar mobile video traffic patterns.
Source: Citrix

The report revealed that North America and Europe show similar mobile video traffic patterns, while South America and Asia have slightly lower video content consumption on mobile devices. The Middle East has the highest average of mobile video traffic by volume.

Citrix analyzed more than 850 million mobile videos delivered over more than 40 operators worldwide and found that depending upon mobile network speed there is generally a 10 to 50 second range of video stalling per clip. Video stalling on even the fastest networks still occurs based on dynamic conditions such as subscriber demand and network congestion. The company said that on average, video optimization technology reduces the amount of stalling by 57 percent per video clip.

For more:
- see this Citrix release

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