Internet Data Traffic Dips at UK ISP TalkTalk for Christmas Day

Customers of broadband ISP TalkTalk gobbled less data on Christmas Day 2019 (25th Dec) than a normal Wednesday. Overall internet traffic on the provider’s network peaked at 4.107Tbps (Terabits per second) this year (3.35Tbps in 2018), which compares with 5.876Tbps on the first Wednesday of this month (3.96Tbps in 2018).

We should point out that it’s not unusual for online data traffic to dip on Christmas Day, since most people are only making mild use of general online services, social media and video streaming while spending time with their families (and / or recovering from a heavy Christmas lunch).

However the story was a little bit different for Boxing Day (Thursday) this year, which might be partly due to the mass of football matches and related streaming taking place. On Boxing Day TalkTalk informed ISPreview.co.uk that their internet traffic peaked at 5.553Tbps, which is up from both 3.795Tbps last year and also the first normal Thursday of this month (5.217Tbps).

You can see a similar sort of trend to this by looking at the general traffic flowing over the LON1 server at the London Internet Exchange (LINX), which is used by hundreds of providers across the United Kingdom. A higher peak exists on Boxing Day compared with Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (both are also down on the prior week’s normal traffic levels).

On a more general note, TalkTalk said they are seeing a 30-40% increase in data usage year-on-year, mainly due to over-the-top video consumption on their network.