A Summary of Openreach’s UK Network Traffic During 2022

Openreach (BT) has published a summary of their network traffic for 2022, which among other things reveals the average monthly UK data consumption of broadband users across their network for the past year. For example, the busiest month in 2022 was actually January, when a total of 5,701PB (PetaBytes) passed over their network.

The network access provider typically supplies numerous broadband ISPs (e.g. TalkTalk, BT, Sky Broadband and hundreds more) across the country and as such their platform often sees the impact of major events, such as big software updates, online video game releases or live video streaming.

The busiest single day of the year so far – and since records began – was Sunday 11th December 2022, which saw Openreach’s network deliver 228.7PB of data traffic (here). This occurred as much of the UK was blanketed in snow, and many people thus opted to stay at home.

The second-busiest day was 18th Sept (216.7PB), the weekend of the Queen’s funeral, while the third-busiest was 6th Nov (216.6PB) – driven by various live football streaming events, such as for the Premier League and FA Cup.

The busiest months in 2022 were January (5,701 PB), October (5,532 PB) and November (5,504 PB). The busiest day of the week is typically a Sunday, while the busiest time on their network is usually between 8pm and 10pm.

Suffice to say, 2022’s annual total is set to break records too, perhaps as early as Christmas Day. In 2021, more than 62,700 PB was downloaded, in 2020 that figure was 50,648 PB, and in 2019 it was around 22,000 PB.

Elsewhere, traffic related to online gaming continues to have a significant impact on the UK’s broadband consumption (i.e. they mean updates and patch downloads, rather than online gameplay itself). For example, one of the busiest days of the year was Wednesday 16th November, when Call of Duty Warzone 2.0 was released. As people downloaded the new game, more than 215 PB of data was consumed nationally.

Finally, Openreach saw a 20% increase in online traffic during England’s World Cup opener against Iran, which unusually took place at 1pm on a Monday, during the working day. More than 23PB of data was carried across the network during the match, compared to 19 PB for the same period, 7 days earlier.