Virgin Media customers’ average daily download hit a record 456GB in November. The average customer upload of 39GB is also a noteworthy figure but the daily nigh-on half-terabyte per household steals the headline.
With entire households stuck at home for most of the day, perhaps it’s not too surprising. A handful of people watching 4K video on their separate devices will quickly rack up the gigs. Entire industries are now running from people’s homes instead of their office broadband connections.
Paul Higgins, VP of Commercial at VMI stated “[o]ur customers are downloading 75% more today than they were pre-COVID 19 and uploading close to 80% more. We’ve also seen daytime traffic double in size at its peak. This continued increase in data usage is not surprising but the importance of a fast and reliable home broadband connection can’t be overstated.”
In fact, a 1,000 person survey carried out by Virgin Media, found that almost two-thirds of respondents would choose their broadband over a foreign holiday. Rather unsurprisingly, 54% of said their broadband is more important now than before COVID-19 ruined 10 months (and counting).
And Gamers, Obviously
November also saw the release of two major new consoles, something which Virgin acknowledge in the press release. Virgin also noted the impact of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War on download and upload numbers.
With 700GB+ of new console to fill and so many gamers rushing to try out as many games as possible while the console is still fresh, PS5 and Xbox Series X being referenced as part-cause for the big tinterwebs surge is easy to imagine. One single game making enough of a splash shocked this writer despite CoD:BOCW‘s 120GB size.
Are you in any way surprised that data throughput has surged during the pandemic?? Are you surprised that one game alone has made enough of an impact to be mentioned as a factor??
