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Video streaming accounts for the vast majority of data traffic on the networks of at least two major South African Internet service providers (ISPs).
Local Internet traffic has surged since the Covid-19 pandemic, as evidenced by feedback from fixed-network ISPs and mobile operators in the past few years.
Another clear indication of the increased online activity is the jump in traffic through South Africa’s biggest Internet exchange point — NAPAfrica.
During peak usage on 11 September 2023, the exchange recorded a throughput of around 3.6 Terabits per second (Tbps).
That comes after significant momentum driven by expanded broadband connectivity, increased home fibre speeds, and more people working and learning remotely.
It recorded 3Tbps throughput for the first time in February 2023, triple the milestone 1Tbps it achieved at the start of the initial Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020.
The graph below shows how NAPAfrica’s throughput has consistently peaked well above 3Tbps over the past few days.
MyBroadband asked several ISPs for feedback on their web traffic patterns and whether they needed to upgrade or adjust their networks to meet the demand.
Telkom told MyBroadband its network was prepared and engineered for the anticipated “data tsunami”, which has ensured it performed and adapted to the changes as expected.
The company operates an ISP business that deals directly with both fixed and mobile customers and a fibre network operator (FNO) in the form of Openserve, which resells its products to other ISPs.
Out of the top 30 bandwidth consumption protocols on its network, Telkom’s fixed ISP business found the top 15 were all video streaming applications or websites.
“Streaming services from Netflix, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram Video and DStv Now represent the top 5 protocols, consuming approximately 80% of combined tracked protocols,” Telkom said.
Netflix led the way with 37% of the traffic consumed on Telkom’s fixed network in the year to date, followed by YouTube with 22% and TikTok with 12%.
While Netflix and YouTube saw no overall increase in traffic usage, TikTok recorded an impressive 80% jump in traffic between July 2022 and July 2023.
Telkom also said Instagram video consumption was “definitely” on the rise, although it did not share specific data on the increased usage.
The Meta Platforms-owned service has increasingly focused on short video content with its Reels feature to try and draw users with a similar format as TikTok.
On the flip side, DStv Now and Disney+ recorded a slight decrease in consumption during the year — 12% and 9%.
Amazon Video showed growth, possibly as a replacement offer for DStv Now and Disney+.
Another major ISP and FNO — Herotel — told MyBroadband that its biggest sources of traffic were Netflix (21.7%), Google (17.8%), and Meta Platforms (14.7%).
The latter two include traffic from YouTube, which is owned by Google, as well as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, which are owned by Meta.
On its own, YouTube accounted for 13.4% of Google’s 17.8% consumption.
In the first eight months of the year, 468 Petabytes (468,000 Terabytes or 468,000,000 Gigabytes) of data was consumed on Netflix on Herotel’s network.
Herotel said it had to increase network capacity to keep up with data traffic and use growth over the past few years.
“Not just have we doubled users in two years, but users simply consume more over time,” Herotel said.
Herotel said it has also pushed AAA and content delivery networks to bring the resources of large streaming services like Netflix, YouTube and Facebook closer to the customer. Herotel said this was possible due to the integrated nature of its service — as a combined FNO and ISP.
The approach takes traffic away from large peering points like NAPAfrica.
“We are thus serving 25–30% of traffic used at eight other non-metro locations across the country,” Herotel said.
Herotel provided a breakdown of how much traffic from major streaming services originated from local caches.
| Herotel — Data traffic through local caches in year to date | |||
| Cache | Data transferred in 8 months (petabytes) | Number of locations | Cache ratio efficiency — International to local |
| Google Cache | 178.57PB | 8 | 1 : 1.5 100Mbps : 150Mbps |
| Netflix Cache | 351.01PB | 8 | 1 : 3.8 100Mbps : 380Mbps |
| Meta Cache | 34.03PB | 1 | 1 : 2.4 100Mbps : 240Mbps |
Afrihost, Cool Ideas, Cybersmart, Level-7, Mweb, RSAWeb, and Supersonic did not provide feedback by the time of publication.
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