- Australia’s internet is at risk of collapse from constant online streaming
- An IT professor believes the internet could ‘effectively stop’ during peak times
- Netflix Australia revealed most Australian’s stream TV and movies at 8pm
- The concerns come after statistics show the surge in data downloads this year
By Nkayla Afshariyan For Daily Mail Australia| Updated: 07:00 BST, 8 October 2017
Australia’s internet could be on brink of collapse as a result of our love for Netflix and online streaming, an IT expert has warned.
Mark Gregory, electronic and telecommunications associate professor at RMIT University, believes the nation’s network is at risk of failing during peak times. ‘The network could effectively stop between 5pm to 9pm,’ he told The New Daily.
The comments come after the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed figures detailing our obsession with streaming videos online. The statistics showed Australians downloaded one million terabytes of data between March and June this year alone. Total downloads between June 2016 and June 2017 grew by 43 per cent to around three million terabytes.
Netflix Australia revealed to the publication that Australian’s are most active on the streaming network at 8pm. While the figures show a rise in data usage, the National Broadband Network might be struggling to deliver the capacity needed for our binge-watching marathons.
For the 80 per cent of Australian’s who joined the $49 million NBN project, they receive a maximum of 25 megabits (Mbps) download per second.
However, the current rate of streaming cannot cope with the quality of data most Australian’s expect when watching videos online. ‘Netflix is trying to say to customers that we can provide you with 4K,’ Professor Gregory said. ‘But if they were to transmit at 50-70 megabits a second required for 4K, our network could collapse.’