Internet: Netflix and GAFAM together account for half of French traffic
American tech giants, notably streaming champion Netflix, will account for nearly half of all internet traffic in France in 2024, the telecoms regulatory authority (ARCEP) revealed on Friday, July 4.
Last year, "approximately 47% of incoming traffic to the four main Internet service providers came from five players: Netflix, Akamai, Facebook, Google and Amazon," according to the annual report on the state of the Internet in France, illustrating the growth in the consumption of streaming films and series, catch-up TV and videos on social networks.
Netflix remains the player with the highest share (12.3%), even though this has declined significantly compared to the end of 2022, when it was around 20%. "We are optimizing data consumption a lot, thanks to our technology and the adoption of new televisions" whose faster chips can decode stronger compressions and therefore use less data, explained Thomas Volmer, global director of content distribution policy at Netflix.
Server operator Akamai, used by many websites and platforms such as Disney+, now accounts for 12.2% of the total, almost unchanged from last year (12.3% in 2023).
Amazon (9.9% including its live video platform Twitch), Google (7.3%) and Meta (5.4%) complete this top 5. Overall Internet traffic in France also continues to increase, reaching 50.8 terabits per second at the end of 2024, an increase of 9.2% in one year.
Arcep also notes the continued rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI). However, the latter, whose systems are "often opaque as to the sources and parameters used" , is likely to "accentuate the risks of confinement, bias and " algorithmic bubbles " due to a loss of user control over their online choices" , warns the regulator.
He therefore calls on the European Commission to regulate the cloud and AI in a way that ensures "the opening of the market" in order to "preserve fair competition and a framework conducive to innovation" .
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