Sky Broadband Sees UK Internet Traffic Peak at 2Tbps on Christmas Day

Customers of Sky Broadband were apparently quite busy online yesterday, with the ISP reporting that Internet traffic on Christmas day peaked at a staggering 2Tbps (Terabits per second) and that’s 100% up on last year.

According to Sky, over half of their Internet traffic was from streamed video services including Sky’s On Demand service. The ISP goes on to say that it observed a steady increase in traffic between 8am and 12noon, which then dropped between 1pm and 3pm (lunch) before reaching an evening peak at 11pm.

Lyssa McGowan, Sky’s Brand Director, said:

“Our network data shows us that whilst family time is important on Christmas Day it’s becoming condensed between 1pm and 7pm as families want to play with their new tech or settle down with one of the latest TV Box Sets. That’s why having a totally unlimited DSL or fibre package has become so important to families, letting them stream and surf to their hearts’ content with reassurance of the Sky network that offers 99.9% reliability.”

Sky currently has 5,322,000 broadband subscribers, which compares with 4,221,000 on their budget rival TalkTalk. By comparison, TalkTalk’s last traffic peak occurred during early December when data usage reached 1.38Tbps.