Perhaps the biggest finding from the latest ByteMobile analysis of mobile carrier traffic is that where  it comes to mobile video, touch-screen smartphone usage mimics laptop usage. That is important because it represents a potentially-huge shift in behavior. up to this point a “typical” smart phone user might consume a few hundred megabytes a month, where fixed-line PC users routinely consume gigabytes each month.

Since video is the most bandwidth-intensive application, it has huge implications that video behavior on smart phones now is beginning to resemble PC use of video so closely. The other important issue is video resolution, since higher-resolution video disproportionately affects network bandwidth. 

Video generates 40 percent to 60 percent of total mobile data traffic on wireless networks. On average, users are requesting high-resolution videos 29 percent of the time; however, that percentage of videos is responsible for 45 percent of total traffic on the network, Bytemobile (News - Alert) said. 

And there is a conundrum here. When videos stall, user experience obviously suffers. But if mobile operators optimize delivery so that video plays better, users will watch more video. 

Depending on network conditions and time of day, mobile videos stall between five percent and 40 percent of the time. On one hand, that is poor user experience. On the other hand, improving user experience leads to happier customers, but arguably more demand for videos. 

Video optimization technology reduces stalling by 30 percent to 50 percent, Bytemobile said. From a business perspective, it might not make sense for a mobile operator to spend money enhancing video performance and driving higher usage, if there is an uncertain financial return, beyond those related to customer churn or acquisition.

But the ability to optimize video might well be an important source of business to business revenue, especially when an operator creates a video-optimized tier of service that can be sold both to end users who value video consumption, as well as to video providers who want to maintain quality performance. 

Wireless networks need to support video demand during peak traffic hours, but also at most hours of the day, ByteMobile said. 

The majority of mobile data traffic traverses the network between noon and midnight, as you would expect, paralleling the “busy hour” for Internet use in the evening and voice traffic during the work day.

Assuming key business issues can be resolved, online video viewed from mobile devices is going to explode.  

In fact, tools that provide more granular insight into the actual video consumers are watching, when and with what quality of experience, are likely to become more important in the future, to ensure quality measures for mobile video, eliminate or limit churn behavior based on poor video experience and provide key analytics valuable for video partners and advertisers.

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