Over-the-top media service

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Over-the-top media service, or OTT, is the technology that made it possible for you to watch nearly anything, whenever you want, on almost any screen you own. By 2025, streaming had become the most popular way to watch television in the United States. That milestone was not inevitable. It required a decades-long dismantling of the broadcast, cable, and satellite infrastructure that had defined TV for generations.

  The shift started earlier than most people realize. In March 1998, Hong Kong Telecom launched iTV, described as the world's first video-on-demand streaming platform. It also offered music-on-demand and racing-on-demand. It lasted just four years before shutting down in 2002. Yet the concept it demonstrated would eventually reshape how billions of people around the world spend their evenings.

  What makes OTT different from the systems it replaced? How did a single data-delivery method come to cover everything from blockbuster movies to podcasts to live sports? And what does the record of 61.2 million people watching a single event simultaneously tell us about where this technology is heading?

• 2. Bypassing the Gatekeepers

  ›

  Cable and satellite companies once controlled which channels reached your living room. OTT broke that arrangement by routing video directly over the public Internet, cutting out the multiple-system operators who had long acted as the gatekeepers of television.

  The Internet service provider still carries the data packets that make up an OTT stream. But crucially, the ISP holds no responsibility for the content itself, its copyrights, or who can legally view it. That responsibility sits entirely with the OTT provider. The ISP is, in legal terms, just a pipe.

  This distinction matters because it changes the entire business model for video distribution. OTT providers negotiate licensing rights directly with content owners, rather than working through the traditional broadcast chain. They can also produce original programming themselves, owning the content rather than merely licensing it.

  In 2011, Canada's telecommunications regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, put a formal definition on the concept. The CRTC stated that it "considers that Internet access to programming independent of a facility or network dedicated to its delivery" is the defining feature of an over-the-top service. That phrase, "independent of a facility," captured exactly what made OTT new: it needed no dedicated cable line, no satellite dish, no proprietary set-top box from a telecom. Any device with an Internet connection could become a television.

• 3. How Viewers Actually Watch

  ›

  Smart TVs with built-in streaming platforms are among the most common ways people reach OTT services today. But the access points extend well beyond a single screen.

  Streaming devices like Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Roku plug into existing television sets. Video game consoles double as streaming terminals. Personal computers handle OTT through a standard web browser. Smartphones and tablets carry dedicated apps. A 2018 analysis of subscribers by Uscreen, a membership platform for video creators, found that 45 percent used iOS and Android mobile devices to access OTT, while 39 percent streamed through web browsers.

  By mid-2017-58 percent of US households were accessing at least one OTT service each month through a streaming device, game console, or smart TV. At that point, 84 percent of advertising revenues in the OTT space were already coming from those device-based channels, outpacing videos played in web browsers on desktop and laptop computers.

  The early technical experience was different from what viewers have today. Services like iTunes once required a full download to complete before playback could begin. Internet Protocol Television, or IPTV, had already solved part of that problem by starting playback before a download finished. Modern OTT streaming resolved the tension differently, streaming continuously over the open Internet rather than over a managed network, at the cost of some instantaneous channel-switching that cable subscribers had taken for granted.

• 4. Business Models and Categories

  ›

  Subscription video on demand, abbreviated as SVOD, is the model most viewers associate with streaming. Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are the two services the source specifically names in this category, providing access to libraries of film and television in exchange for a monthly fee.

  Free ad-supported streaming television, known as FAST, offers a different arrangement. Services like Pluto TV and Tubi deliver content at no charge to the viewer, funded instead by advertising. The US Federal Communications Commission classifies these and similar services as online video distributors, or OVDs.

  A third category sits between the two. So-called skinny bundles, offered by platforms like Sling TV and Hulu with Live TV, provide live streams of specialty channels. The FCC groups these under virtual multichannel video programming distributors, or virtual MVPDs. Other services in that regulatory category named by the FCC include DirecTV Stream, FuboTV, and YouTube TV.

  Audio streaming follows a parallel structure. Services such as BBC Sounds, Spotify, and Pandora deliver radio, music, podcasts, and audiobooks over the Internet using the same fundamental OTT model, without a dedicated broadcast transmitter or a cable subscription required to reach the listener.

• 5. Records and Reach

  ›

  In 2019, Disney Entertainment's video streaming platform Hotstar set a record of 18.6 million simultaneous viewers during a single OTT event in India. That number held for four years.

  In 2023, Disney+ Hotstar shattered it with 59 million concurrent viewers. Then in 2025, the platform, by then rebranded as JioHotstar, pushed the mark to 61.2 million people watching at the same moment. No cable network or satellite broadcaster had ever assembled an audience of that scale in a single real-time stream.

  The global picture in 2023 showed 1.8 billion subscriptions to OTT platforms, with streaming representing 38 percent of total television consumption worldwide. In the United States, OTT became the most popular form of television in 2024. By May 2025, streaming's share of all US television viewership had reached 44.8 percent, surpassing network and cable television combined. That represented a 71 percent increase in streaming use since 2021.

  The list of OTT platforms that have crossed the threshold of one million subscribers now spans dozens of services across at least a dozen countries, including Acorn TV, BritBox, and BBC iPlayer in the UK; Crunchyroll, ESPN, and Peacock in the US; Coupang Play and TVING in South Korea; SonyLIV and ZEE5 in India; and Showmax in South Africa, among many others.

• 6. OTT Beyond Video

  ›

  WhatsApp, owned by Meta Platforms, is the example the source gives for OTT messaging: a mobile application that replaces traditional text messaging by routing communications over the Internet rather than through a carrier's SMS network. Other messaging services in this category include Viber, WeChat, iMessage, Skype, Telegram, and the now-defunct Google Allo.

  Voice calls follow the same logic. Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, services such as FaceTime, Skype, Viber, WhatsApp, WeChat, and Zoom use open Internet communication protocols to replace or extend the call services that mobile phone operators have historically provided.

  The term OTT in mobile communications also describes no-carrier cellphones, where all communications are charged as data, sidestepping arrangements that have historically limited competition among carriers. This application of the concept extends the same core principle that defines video OTT: the Internet carries the service, and the traditional operator is bypassed.

  Cloud computing and the Internet of Things are the technologies the source identifies as the next layer of change for OTT platforms. IoT device integration is creating new opportunities for personalized viewing through smart TVs and connected home devices. Cloud infrastructure allows OTT providers to scale their capacity rapidly in response to shifting viewership patterns, which matters most during the kind of peak moments when tens of millions of viewers arrive at once.