Stress incurred during a six-second delay in video streaming is equivalent to the anxiety of taking a math test or watching a horror movie alone, a report by Swedish communication technology giant Ericsson said.
The report also said this stress is greater than the stress experienced by standing at the edge of a virtual cliff, announced a press release from the company here.
Ericsson's Mobility Report revealed the impact of different levels of network performance on smartphone users and their perceptions of mobile operators and digital content providers.
"Delays in loading web pages and videos under time pressure caused mobile users' heart rates to rise an average of 38 percent. Also, once a video begins, an additional pause can cause stress levels to increase dramatically," the report said.
In the study, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) of an operator increased significantly when associated with a delay-free experience -- by 4.5 points.
"However, the operator's NPS dropped on average four points with moderate time-to-content and re-buffering delays. Interestingly, moderate delays result in a double negative for mobile operators: decreased engagement with their brand and increased engagement with competitors," the report highlighted.
The Net Promoter Score is an index ranging from -100 to 100 that measures the willingness of customers to recommend a company's products or services to others.
The report said social networking is second only to video for driving mobile traffic growth and over the next six years total social networking traffic will be around 12 times that of the previous six years.
Out of the 68 million mobile subscriptions added in the fourth quarter of 2015 worldwide, India topped with the most (21 million) subscriptions, followed by China (six million) and the US (five million) on the second and third spots.
There are now one billion 4G/LTE subscriptions worldwide, with approximately 160 million additions in the fourth quarter of 2015.
