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Analysis of an internet service provider's usage data suggests YouTube still accounts for more than double the streaming traffic of the BBC's iPlayer.
Experts at technology group Telco 2.0, using data from the small UK ISP Plusnet, said 7% of traffic during the peak evening hours was for iPlayer streams. An additional, negligible proportion came from the iPlayer download application.
YouTube's share during the same period, despite its much lesser bitrate and consequent worse picture quality, was 17%.
Telco 2.0 said that, despite the publicity surrounding the iPlayer since its formal launch at Christmas, it remained much less important to ISPs than YouTube. At any one time, roughly seven times more UK clients are using YouTube than iPlayer.
However, a blog posting from the group predicted the significance of traffic from traditional broadcasters would increase as they put more content online, and improved its quality.
"Our analysis suggests that this situation is set to change quite dramatically as traditional broadcasters increase their presence online, with significant impact for all players," said Telco 2.0.
"The clearing of rights for the BBC’s vast archive will take many years, but slowly but surely more and more content will be available. This is true for all major broadcasters in the UK and the rest of the world."
