Netflix has basically won the internet by garnering almost 30 percent of peak internet traffic per day which is up from 20 percent almost six months ago.
Late to the party as usual, cable companies are now searching for ways to tame the beast. They have decided to put a cap on the amount of data a customer can use each month in hopes that they will keep their cable services in lieu of watching shows online. They could have gone the Hollywood route and tried to work with Netflix, but no they want viewers all to themselves. They want world domination AND a happy ending. Little do they know, this will do nothing to curtail the impending thousand year rule of Netflix.
Hollywood learned this lesson and now makes deals with Netflix and other sites such as Hulu on a regular basis. These deals also involve REAL money. It only cost Netflix around $91 million dollars for the rights to stream 91 episodes of Mad Men. You will also get to see many Miramax films on Hulu Plus and Netflix thanks to a recent deal.
The suggested caps on data stand at 150 GB and 250 GB, respectively. This is supposed to allow a maximum of 200 shows to be viewed per month and 25 standard definition movies or 13 high definition movies. This is if you do NOTHING else on the internet. It doesn’t account for any other internet activity.
But then again, maybe Netflix isn’t as big and bad as it appears to be? Even their own CEO admits that cable is still king and there aren’t many people that are cutting their cable to watch their television exclusively online. However, people are still poor and if they are going to cut costs I’m guessing cable would be one of the first things to go especially if you can see the same thing online and only pay for high speed internet.
