Alright, Alright, Alright is something HBO GO users weren’t saying last night.
HBO GO was offering subscribers (and perhaps a few of their friends) the ability to not only stream True Detective’s finale on demand after airing, but to also watch it live as it was being broadcast. Unfortunately it appears there were issues.
Below is data from Saturday and Sunday from a US fixed access network. The chart shows that traffic levels were broadly consistent throughout the day. At 9pm on Sunday, Just as True Detective began; HBO GO suffered a significant and prolonged outage.
When the service came back online between 12:30 AM and 12:45 AM Monday morning, it experienced a spike in usage for about an hour (the exact length of the episode itself) before dropping off, likely as exhausted subscribers went to bed.
So what impact does HBO GO typically have on operators? Not much. Based on data from our 2H 2013 Global Internet Phenomena Report, the service accounted for 0.67% of traffic. Now had the service been working last night, it likely could have doubled or even tripped that share figure for an evening, but it still would only be a fraction of the 31.6% downstream share Netflix typically experiences.
Even though it didn’t go as planned, Kudos should go to HBO for offering live streaming to their subscribers. Let’s just hope time isn’t a flat circle, and that for their next livestreaming outing (Game of Thrones season four premiere, perhaps?) they are able to sort out the kinks.
