Torrent traffic increases in Europe due to fragmentation of legal video services

Torrent traffic is on the rise again in Europe, according to Sandvine, a Canadian broadband management company. The company points to the fact that consumers have to purchase subscriptions to multiple services for a wide range of products.

The increase breaks the trend seen from 2011 to 2015, according to Sandvine. In 2011, torrent traffic took up nearly 60 percent of upload bandwidth in Europe, but by 2015 that had dropped to 21 percent. In the meantime, that percentage has already risen to 32 percent, Sandvine tells Torrentfreak. Sandvine refers to the emea region, which includes Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

In Europe, torrent traffic accounts for the bulk of upstream bandwidth consumption, Sandvine notes. The company notes that more services are producing exclusive videos for their services, such as HBO with Game of Thrones and Netflix with House of Cards. “To get access to all those services makes it very expensive for consumers, so they subscribe to one, and resort to piracy for the rest,” Sandvine said.

The company also emphasizes that many exclusive series are released in the United States and are not well distributed internationally. In addition, Game of Thrones is said to be so popular that viewers worldwide will download it anyway if it does not become immediately available worldwide. Sandvine’s numbers come out last June, a period with no new Game of Thrones episodes. They will come again next year. The full numbers will appear next week in Sandvine’s 2018 Global Internet Phenomena report.