Apple iOS8 Update Pushes TalkTalk’s UK Internet Traffic to 1.25Tbps

Consumer broadband ISP TalkTalk set yet another record last week when the release of Apple’s latest iOS8 software update for iPhones and iPads helped to push the Internet data traffic on their network in the United Kingdom to a new peak of 1.25Tbps (Terabits per second), which equates to 1,250Gbps (Gigabits | note: 1000Mbps = 1Gbps).

Apparently the iOS8 update alone accounted for around 50Gbps of today’s figure and the overall total also represents an increase from 832Gbps in September 2013 when the last major iOS update was released, which itself grew to 900Gbps during January 2014 (here) and before now the last peak was known to be around 1Tbps in March 2014 (here).

Suffice to say that TalkTalk’s rising demand for data capacity, which is supported by the “truly unlimited” status of their broadband packages, is a good example of the on-going trend that we see right across the industry. Consumers do not stand still and content quality (especially the single biggest data hog of Internet video) is always improving, which of course requires faster and more capable networks.

Colin Whitbread, TalkTalks Chief Network Officer, said:

“We’re increasing capacity a hundred-fold over the next five years as we expect demand to keep growing, and had more than enough bandwidth to cope. There were no reports of the network slowing down.

We believe making all of our packages totally unlimited, so customers can download as much as they like and are never slowed down, is changing the way people use TalkTalk. Customers feel free to watch as many YouTube videos and download as much on iPlayer as they like, and as more customers switch to Fibre Broadband from TalkTalk people are doing more online than ever.”

The above news also connects back to TalkTalk’s June 2014 decision to extend and expand upon their existing network capacity deal with the Zayo Group (here), which is an international bandwidth and fibre optic infrastructure provider. Meanwhile the trend of rising data demands will continue to grow, just as it has done for every year since the Internet was first switched on.