Stranger Things 2 is coming. Halloween 2017. Courtesy: Netflix

It may not be the kind of news that old-school broadcast TV networks want to hear but there’s no denying the ability to watch what you want when you want has revolutionised viewing habits.

The Australian launch of Netflix two years ago filled a gap in the market for flexible viewing in a way that local players were never completely able to.

Now we’re spoilt for choice from Netflix and Stan to Amazon Prime and Foxtel Play*. Not to mention the free-to-air guys like ABC iView (who, to be fair, was doing it first) and SBS OnDemand.

And there’s no indication this streaming addiction is stopping anytime soon.

A study from Ovum, commissioned by NBN Co, predicted seven million Australians will have a subscription to a streaming or on-demand service by 2022. That’s a 170 per cent increase on the 2.6 million Australians currently forking out a monthly fee. This equates to roughly $1 billion in revenue.

For comparison’s sake, the TV advertising network in Australia is estimated to grow to $16.4 billion by 2019, according to PwC, so it may not overtake commercial TV anytime soon. But it’s certainly put traditional TV on notice as that sector faces the challenges of falling ratings and advertisers who are increasingly moving their money to digital platforms such as Facebook.

Convincing advertisers to spend more on broadcast TV can be a harder proposition when studies like this suggest the streaming obsession will only grow, and likely take more (especially younger) viewers away from the traditional box.

NBN data showed homes connected to the NBN network use on average 148GB of data per month, an increase of 32 per cent on last year.

“Access to fast broadband is enabling the online video streaming revolution to thrive in Australia as we move from broadcast to broadband TV consumption,” NBN executive general manager, Product and Pricing, Sarah Palmer said. “The significant increase in usage over the NBN network tells us the more bandwidth Australians have, the more content we want to consume.”

*News Corp, publisher of this website, owns 50 per cent of Foxtel.