YouTube has announced support for 1080p streaming, in response to the ever-increasing resolution of consumer digital video cameras and the growing penetration of 1080p-enabled households.

What does 1080p mean to the average subscriber, and what does YouTube’s announcement mean to Internet providers?  Consider the trailer for “The Dark Knight”, which is about two and a half minutes in length.  This table shows the average stream rate at various resolutions.

Clearly, the instantaneous bandwidth requirements are dramatically different for the varying video resolutions.

*As an aside, it’s interesting to note that for the average user watching the video on a laptop, netbook, or even desktop computer, it will be hard to notice a significant difference in visual quality despite almost a 6x increase in bandwidth utilization.  Most monitors simply won’t display in 1080p resolution.  However, if you have your computer hooked up to a 24” monitor or HDTV, or if you have a web-enabled TV, then 1080p represents a major upgrade.

What happens to the world’s broadband networks if more users start clicking on YouTube’s “watch in HD” button?  Measured by total network bytes, YouTube is perhaps the most popular site on the Internet – our recent 2009 Global Broadband Phenomena study found that YouTube accounts for about 5 percent of total Internet traffic.  While we’re certainly not going to see an overnight 6x bandwidth increase for YouTube as a whole, if even 10% of YouTube users start watching their videos in 1080p (and this assumes more 1080p videos become available), then networks around the world may well be facing a dramatic and rapid increase in YouTube traffic, and in bandwidth utilization as a whole.