News roundup April 2016

A final roundup of April’s news and developments:

• Deloitte reported that streaming and binge watching have taken over from live television consumption among some US demographics in its 10th annual Digital Democracy Survey. Nearly half of Americans now subscribe to streaming video services, with millennials aged 14-25 spending more time streaming video content than watching live television (also see coverage from Network World).
• ISP Review reported analysis by Point Topic which shows that there are now more fibre to the home (FTTH) than cable subscribers worldwide.
• ISP Review also reported on the latest HTTP Archive statistics which reveal that the average web page size is now 2.3MB, up from 1.95MB one year ago and 0.7MB five years ago.
• Ars Technica reported on a limited deployment of Google Fibre in Nashville, which brings the total number of cities where the service is available to five.
• Silicon Republic reported that commencement of the Irish Government’s €275m National Broadband Plan to connect 1.8m citizens to a minimum of 30Mbit/s broadband by 2020 is to be delayed for a year until 2017 (also see coverage from the Irish Independent and this previous post for more background on broadband developments in Ireland). The procurement will now not now begin until 2017 having previously been planned to start by the middle of 2016.
• Finally, the US State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) published a new report, State K-12 Broadband Leadership: Driving Connectivity and Access, highlighting “the powerful impact of state leadership in driving critical policy decisions at the national and state level to support broadband networks, bandwidth capacity, and Wi-Fi implementation and home access for low income families.”