Broadband usage more than doubled in 2020 as people worked and socialised from home
2 min readBroadband usage has more than doubled in the UK this year as 2020 became the year of home working, Zoom calls and live streaming.
Figures from broadband network Openreach revealed data consumption rose from 22,000 Petabytes (PB) last year to 50,000 PB in 2020.
Colin Lees, chief technology and information officer at Openreach, said: “It’s been a year unlike any other and we believe that’s played a major part in this huge jump in data consumption.
“We know more businesses asked their employees to work from home throughout most of 2020, so connecting remotely has been and continues to be important for everyone.
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Data consumption jump
“January and February saw data consumption at around 2,700PB per month – before the pandemic brought about a big increase – with most months at more than 4,000PB – for the rest of the year.
“In terms of capacity, our network has coped well during the pandemic.
“We have a team of tech experts working hard behind-the scenes to make sure there’s enough network capacity for every eventuality.
“They’re constantly preparing for things such as major retail events like Black Friday or the release of the latest big ticket TV and film titles on streaming services like Netflix and Amazon.”
Black Friday and Netflix
On 15 occasions during the year, the daily record for broadband use was broken as people worked from home, socialised online, attended video conferences, streamed videos and live sport and downloaded video games for consoles.
Boxing Day was named the busiest day of the year for broadband, when a record 210 PB was consumed across Openreach’s network used by customers of BT, Plusnet, Sky, TalkTalk and Zen.
The company said this was down to increased numbers of video calls as friends and family got in touch, as well as TV and video game streaming.
The previous record breaking day, 14 November, came when two Autumn Nations Cup rugby matches were screened live.
Openreach’s network traffic charts revealed UK broadband usage surged just before 1pm as the first of the two games approached kick-off.
