Netflix continues to account for over a third of bandwidth used in North America during peak viewing hours in the evening, but Amazon's Instant Video service is gaining share. According to Sandvine's latest semi-annual report on bandwidth usage, collected from its over 250 operator customers worldwide, Netflix accounted for 34.9 percent of peak-time downstream traffic in North America over the last six months, up from 34.2 percent in Sandvine's previous report. Amazon Instant Video has become the second-largest paid streaming video service in North America with 2.6 percent of downstream traffic, more than doubling its share in the past 18 months. HBO Go, which is preparing to launch as a standalone subscription service, accounted for 1 percent of downstream traffic in the region.
Sandvine's report also highlighted a number of interesting online trends elsewhere in the world. As a percentage of traffic, filesharing continues to decline globally in almost all regions except Asia-Pacific, where it still accounts for more than a third of of total traffic. On one fixed network in Australasia, where Netflix isn't even available yet, approximately 2.5 percent of subscribers were accessing the service and it comprised as much as 4 percent of peak downstream traffic.
