UK broadband usage more than doubled in 2020 as the impact of the coronavirus pandemic accelerated long-term trends in consumption growth. Openreach claims its network has transmitted more than 50,000 petabytes (PB) in the past 12 months, up from 22,000 PB generated in 2019. The daily record has been broken 15 times in the past year and the average fiber home has consumed 3000 GB, or 9 GB each day. Movement and activity lockdown restrictions since March mean many people are using their home connections for work, education, entertainment, and communication with friends and family they can't physically see.
Broadband traffic in the UK
Video calls, streaming services and game downloads are cited as three specific causes of the increase and directly caused the daily high of 210 PB on Boxing Day. The previous record was set on November 14, the same day Amazon Prime broadcast two international rugby matches live on its platform. “It's been a year like no other and we believe it has played a significant role in this huge increase in data consumption,” said Colin Lees, Openreach's chief information and technology officer. “We know that more and more companies have been asking their employees to work from home for most of 2020, so remote connection has been and continues to be important for everyone. “In January and February, data consumption was around 2.700 PB per month, before the pandemic caused a large spike, most months to over 4.000 PB, for the rest of the year. . “In terms of capacity, our network has held up well during the pandemic. We have a team of technology experts who work hard behind the scenes to make sure there is enough network capacity for every eventuality. They are constantly preparing for events like big retail events like Black Friday or the release of the latest big TV titles and movies on streaming services like Netflix and Amazon. Increased reliance on home broadband connections has exerted additional control over the UK's communications networks over the past year. While the infrastructure has remained largely resilient in the face of unprecedented demand, there is additional demand for full fiber technology to be rolled out across the country. So far, Openreach has connected more than four million installations to full fiber and plans to reach 20 million by the end of the decade as part of a £12.000 billion investment programme. He indicated that he could go even further with the right level of support. Ofcom and the government have taken steps to ease the regulatory environment, but the commitment to connect every home by 2025 has been abandoned and only €1.200bn in public funds will be available by 2024.