Netflix's Next Streaming Venue May Be South America

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Earlier reports had put Netflix as looking to expand worldwide with its streaming services, and while some places are more hospitable than others, one place that often isn’t considered is South America. But according to some reports, that’s the likely next stop for the hugely popular content delivery system.

Basically, the word out of some analysts–like Dan Rayburn out of Seeking Alpha–says that Netflix needs to go into countries that have good internet penetration rates (a lot of people actually online) and have decent average speeds (between two and three meg) in order to be a worthwhile target. And South America actually looks to have both of those things at once.

Of course, this largely depends on where Netflix actually decides to roll out, but the South American region reportedly has a combined population of around 500 million people, with around 40 percent of them online, and at an average speed of around 3.2 meg.

Those are some pretty convincing numbers, in all honesty, and while they’re really just projections, they dovetail pretty well with other reports that say Netflix is actually being tested in some regions, and that Akamai, a content delivery system, has signed agreements with Netflix to help out with Netflix’s own expansion.

Obviously this is very early-stage stuff, but one thing’s for sure: Netflix isn’t likely to stay static for very long, given all the developments in the industry. There are simply too many competitors going around for them to keep to one place for long; expansion will be necessary in the face of things like Crackle, Hulu, YouTube, and of course, Warner’s acquisition of Flixster. They’ve got to step up their game and go wider if they’re going to keep in tact.

When South Americans can look to see Netflix, if ever, is quite unclear as of yet, but keep watching–I can’t help but think they’ll be getting a whole lot of streaming content in rapid fashion.