Zen Internet Reports Annual UK Internet Traffic Surge of 78%
Broadband ISP Zen Internet has published a brief summary of internet traffic trends on their network for the past year (March 2020 to March 2021), since the first COVID-19 lockdown, which found that internet usage in the United Kingdom had increased by 78% year-on-year.
The global pandemic has caused many adults and children to start working and playing more from home, even outside the major lockdowns, which in turn has driven a significant increase in consumer traffic across most ISPs and Zen Internet are no exception.
Zen reports that traffic to the BBC’s sites increased by a staggering 220%, while Amazon also saw a 143% rise year-on-year and Netflix traffic jumped 136% over the same period (that compares to a 28% increase in the year prior).
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Zen’s Traffic Highlights (2020 to 2021)
— The Xbox launch on 10th October 2021 saw an 11% rise in traffic across Zen’s network.
— Daytime household internet usage increased by 75% and the evening peak by 65%.
— 16th December 2020 saw the biggest peak of 2020, 14% above normal, mostly due to traffic driven by live-streaming of football on Amazon Prime and a Call of Duty game update.
— Christmas Eve and Christmas Day saw a dramatic drop in traffic, 22% and 14% respectively, in comparison to the proceeding weeks (not uncommon as people tend to spend more time doing other things).
— A new traffic record was set on 11th March, with traffic reaching its highest point ever – 18% above the previous peak, but sadly they don’t give a figure for the data volume.
End.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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People in lockdown watched more telly!
Thank goodness Zen have reported that otherwise we’d never have known.
And thank god you commented it otherwise we would never have considered it!
And thank God Boggy left the come-back/meta comment otherwise I won’t have know this was a comments section!
*Meow*
Okay, I’ll fess up. It was me on my 65mbps Zen broadband link.
Haha! We all know it though!
mmm… Well, I suppose I should be glad my needs aren’t too demanding.
I’m perfectly happy and not mind at all to set something going and come back to it (a few hours) later. 😛
I left Zen last year because their customer service went down the toilet over the last few years.
If it was already bad before, it must have gotten even worse during the Lockdown with the massive increase in usage and people having issues.
You’re not wrong, Captain. So many attempts to talk to them unanswered since Christmas. Next week it’ll be three weeks waiting for a response from their loyalty team.
Too late now, I gave up. Leaving at the end of the month, though they don’t know it yet because it seems impossible to speak with them.