About 56 per cent of video consumers on India’s 3G networks encounter significant stalling and re-buffering, leading to frustrated users and high video abandonment rates, as study conducted by an arm of Opera Software has found.
Significant stalling is defined as a video that stalls or buffers more than 10 per cent of its overall playback time.
"With video consumption clearly skyrocketing and causing such experience-impacting congestion in India, the country’s operators should implement cost-effective and quick-to-market solutions to enhance the end-user mobile video streaming experience," said Sunil Kamath, Vice-President for South Asia, Opera Software.
Moreover, data from Skyfire, a fully-owned subsidiary of Opera Software, shows that 83 per cent of 3G users experience atleast some stalling while trying to watch a video. India’s 2G networks fared even worse for mobile video as over 99 per cent of users experienced at least some stalling, the study suggested.
According to Cisco’s 2013 Visual Networking Index, mobile data traffic in India is projected to reach 900 petabytes per month by 2017, with 60 per cent of that data coming from mobile video alone.