From Ars Technica UK
TV piracy services are being used by about 6.5 percent of North American households with broadband access, potentially costing legitimate TV providers billions of dollars a year, a new analysis found. Pirate services that offer live TV channels are apparently responsible for more downstream traffic each night than torrent downloads.Read more: https://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2017/11/pirate-tv-services-are-taking-a-bite-out-of-cable-company-revenue/Based on these figures, there may be 7 million US and Canadian subscribers to pirate TV services that generally cost about $10 a month, the report by Sandvine said. That amounts to $840 million of revenue a year.
We don't know how many people using pirate services would purchase a traditional cable or satellite TV package if the piracy option didn't exist. But if all of those people instead purchased a legal TV package for $50 per month, that would amount to another $4.2 billion revenue a year for North American pay-TV providers, the report said.
"Our research reveals that across multiple tier-1 North American fixed access networks, 6.5 percent of households are communicating with known TV piracy services, and these services accounted for more than 6 percent of downstream traffic in the peak evening hours," Sandvine's new report said.
Sandvine is a vendor that sells equipment to consumer broadband providers to help them manage network congestion. Sandvine's findings are based on a 30-day period in August and September. The 6.5 percent figure "is a measurement of subscribers who were communicating with known IPTV services during that time," and could include people with active subscriptions as well as "people who have dormant subscriptions, or may just subscribe to day passes" to watch certain content, a Sandvine spokesperson told Ars.
I've never paid for a pirate IPTV subscription. Have any of you? Let us know your experiences. How is the quality and ease of use? Part of my cord cutting journey has involved a lot of hunting for good quality streams.
Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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