Three UK Reports an All-Time Mobile Traffic High of 1068 Gbps
Mobile operator Three UK has reported seeing a “record-breaking weekend” of data traffic (mobile broadband) peaks. This included a Saturday evening high on the back of the Champions League final and the highest daily traffic volume on Sunday due, in part, to the release of Stranger Things Season 4 on Netflix.
The first data peak hit 1068Gbps (Gigabits per second) between 21:00 and 21:15 on Saturday evening. But the following day brought another record as the network reached its highest daily volume of all time. In total, “7408Tb” of data was consumed on the network throughout Sunday (we think they mean TeraBytes, not Terabits), driven by an uplift in Netflix usage – Traffic on the streaming service peaked 24% above the previous week.
The peaks were also evident when looking at aggregated traffic data from the London Internet Exchange (LINX), which handles a key chunk of UK and global data traffic through their switches via around a thousand members (broadband ISPs, mobile operators etc.). Traffic on Saturday peaked at just over 6Tbps (Terabits per second), which compares with the highest peak of around 5.4Tbps on the previous Saturday (21st May).
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David Hennessy, CTO of Three UK, said: “Whether it’s enjoying live sport, or bingeing the latest much-watch series, our customers are streaming more than ever. Last weekend saw record-breaking levels of data consumed on our network. We can expect more data peaks in the months ahead, that’s why we are continuing to invest over £2 billion in improving 4G and rolling out 5G to all four corners of the UK.”
As usual, we should point out that demand for data is constantly rising and broadband connections are forever getting faster, thus new peaks of usage are being set all the time by every ISP (broadband consumers seem increase their usage by 30%+ each year).
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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This is the reason we need 5G fast because even 4G can’t keep with demand because if used 4G at once your speed goes down. At least 5G can handle more traffic.
4G can handle very high speeds, operators in the UK only seem to upgrade just enough so they can boast they have the latest generation (3G/4G/5G etc.) but don’t go much beyond that unless an area is heavily congested, many 4G masts are still stuck at 150Mbps despite 4G being capable of well over 10x that with the newer hardware.
Yeah I know bud but 5G can handle even. Like me if I use 4G though the day I can get speeds 30 to 50Mbps on my phone but at night with more people using 4G i am lucky I can 3Mbps that’s called congestion.
@Better Network Coverage
Same will happen with 5G once everyone has a 5G phone, I think however as FTTP rollout gains pace it might sort itself out as people are less dependent on mobile broadband.
If only the carriers provided enough backhaul from the masts for 4g, let alone 5g eh!
“The same will happen with 5G when everyone has a 5G phone” is the worst argument ever and just shows how uneducated someone is on such topic.
@Sam
It’s from personal experience, happened with both 3G and 4G, they were fast at first and decreased over time as takeup increased.
Mobile networks just to read news. Not for a daily use.
That’s why ee the best I am getting 300 mpbs on there 4g plus downloads the lowest is over 100 mpbs three uk is crap
EE is very good speed on 4g and 5g. I left EE network yesterday because of voice call quality.
It’s getting worst day by day. Calls drops or other person can’t hear properly and noticed EE network also drains the battery.
Still not good enough to keep Three uk as main network. 5g coverage betting better and 4g speed getting worst. Three uk need to start rolling 700mhz 5g soon.
I use as backup sim.
Super happy with three myself. 950mbit download. 100 up. £2 a month. I know a lot of people like to knock three, but to me all the other networks are much much worse. Vodafone can’t even figure out what 5G is. O2 5G doesn’t exist. EE 5G is in a random handful of places, costs the earth and to “cap” it off you’ve got a 1TB FUP lol.
So yeah, there’s only one real 5G network in the UK. Three’s.
How ya get 2 ha
carl it was a business promo a few months back. 24m. unlimited data-only sim. £2.
but i had to take out 3 sims to get that price. In total I pay £22 (ex vat) for 3 x sims. 2 unlimited data. one unlimited everything.
Amazing value imho. I have one sim in a 5G router as my backup internet, one in my mobile, and one spare/ipad SIM.
Ee hasn’t got a fup as I already consumed 4 tb already downloading ps4 games digital this month
It might say there is a fup but I hadn’t had my download speeds reduced.
Bent. EE does hae a FUP. Wether or not they enforce it seems to be a mixed-bag.
https://ee.co.uk/help/help-new/offers-and-services/other/unlimited-plans
“We will consider usage above 600GB/month to be non-personal use and have the right to apply traffic management controls to deprioritise your mobile traffic during busy periods or to move you to a business plan”