Broadband ISP TalkTalk Sees UK Internet Traffic Surge 50% in 2020

Budget broadband ISP TalkTalk has today reported that, on average, household internet usage on their network increased by 50% year-on-year in 2020 as the COVID-19 crisis “accelerated the importance of home connectivity” across all aspects of life (e.g. working from home, video conferencing, education etc.).

The highest ever data usage peak of 7.63Tbps (Terabits per second) was also set on the 16th December 2020 (up from 7.23Tbps just a week earlier on 6th December), which the ISP said was largely driven by a combination of football on Amazon Prime’s video streaming service and the latest update for Call of Duty (a popular online game).

A regional analysis of the UK’s broadband usage on TalkTalk’s network found that it was towns outside of the capital that saw the biggest increases in data consumption. For example, residents of the West Yorkshire town of Halifax saw the highest year-on-year increase of 58%, while neighbouring Hull hit 55%.

Lockdown also inspired a new generation of silver surfers. Data reveals that the usage by people over the age of 75 rose by 52% year-on-year, which is the steepest rise across all generations.

Previous Traffic Peaks on TalkTalk
6th December 2020: 7.23Tb/s driven by a combination of video streaming, with many consumers tuning in to watch the Liverpool Vs. Wolves Premier League match and watching films on various services

15th December 2020: 7.16Tb/s driven by a combination of football on Amazon Prime and updates for Fortnite and Call of Duty Black Ops

17th December 2020: 7.12Tb/s driven by football on Amazon Prime

14th November 2020: 6.94Tb/s driven by a combination of console updates and international rugby

10th November 2020: 6.85Tb/s driven by the Xbox One launch and Call If Duty updates

1st December 2020: 6.82Tb/s driven by Champions League Football

We should point out that demand for data is constantly rising and so new peaks of usage are being set all the time by every UK ISP (usage across the industry typically grows by 30%+ per year – averaged). But most ISPs also employ Content Delivery Networks (CDN) to help manage the load from such events, which caches popular content closer in the network to end-users (i.e. improves performance without network strain).

Gary Steen, TT’s MD of Technology, said:

“2020 has accelerated the digital-first lifestyle and the increase in usage we’ve seen this year is just the beginning. We expect additional network peaks to happen throughout the Christmas period – particularly on Boxing Day, as live football coupled with new devices being connected to the internet and larger gaming downloads driving up demand.”

One other contributing factor to the surge in usage seen during 2020 could also be the growing rollout and take-up of ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband packages, which has been somewhat overlooked above. Admittedly, this won’t yet be having a huge impact upon TalkTalk’s own base, but then we can’t be sure as the ISP doesn’t tend to split out their customer figures across different “fibre” technologies.