Why we need high upstream bandwidths

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 12 March 2009 01:06

IT Industry - Market

When Sol Trujillo announced plans to upgrade Telstra's HFC network to the 100Mbps downstream bandwidths of DOCSIS 3.0 he claimed that Telstra's research had identified demand for the increased upstream bandwidth of 2.0Mbps. Research released by Ericson and CNN appears to confirm this.

The research found that an estimated 73 percent of CNN's online audience of global citizens share user-generated video content. "In fact, 66 percent of those over 45 share user-generated video content, de-bunking the myth that it is just an activity for the youth," Ericsson said, adding: "In a nod to the sharp rise of citizen journalism, and perhaps in response to the growing number of social platforms enabling video sharing exchange, 16 percent of respondents are sharing user-generated video content are doing so with other digital community members."

Other findings of the survey were that almost a third (29 percent) of those surveyed record video clips on their mobile phone; 67 percent say their TV viewing on PC (desktop or laptop) has increased in the past three to four years and almost a quarter (23 percent) say their TV viewing on mobile devices has increased over the same period. Flexibility (71 percent) or the desire to catch up on missed content (51 percent) were cited as the main reasons for watching TV content on the PC. Broadcaster websites (60 percent) emerged as the number one choice for accessing TV content online. This is followed by broadcaster sections on video sharing sites such as YouTube (13 percent).

Television remains the most popular viewing device for CNN's audience of global citizens. 35 percent watched their television set for more than 10 hours a week, whereas viewing for this length of time is considerably lower for PC (9 percent) and mobile devices (5 percent).

Eleven hundred online interviews were conducted globally across the CNN.com, CNN.com/international and CNNmoney.com websites.