Broadband ISP TalkTalk Reveal Q1 2021 UK Internet Trends

Internet provider TalkTalk has today published the latest volume (3) of their “Internet Insights” report, which offers quarterly analysis of their network traffic and usage trends. For example, it notes that UK internet usage was up over 44% pre-pandemic to April 2021, but it has fallen away a bit since then.

The provider also revealed that, last month, their network handled an average of 61 billion website requests per day (42 million request per minute). Elsewhere, there was a 13% usage drop on the week of April 12th compared to the week before, which coincided with the reopening of pubs, restaurants and shops.

TalkTalk also reported that there was a 33% increase in data usage among their business customers between April 2020 and April 2021, which partly reflected the move by some workers back into an office.

Otherwise, the biggest spike in consumer internet traffic over the latest period occurred during the Manchester City match on Tuesday 4th May 2021, which saw TalkTalk’s traffic hit 7.55Tbps (Terabits per second). But that’s not shown in the chart (pictured) and is also down from the peak of 7.63Tbps that was recorded on 16th December 2020.

The Full Insights Report offers a little bit of extra detail.