{"id":29321,"date":"2021-12-27T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-27T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/?p=29321"},"modified":"2021-12-30T18:17:23","modified_gmt":"2021-12-30T18:17:23","slug":"a-snapshot-of-openreachs-uk-network-traffic-past-13-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2021\/12\/a-snapshot-of-openreachs-uk-network-traffic-past-13-months.html","title":{"rendered":"A Snapshot of Openreach’s UK Network Traffic – Past 13 Months UPDATE"},"content":{"rendered":"

Openreach<\/a> (BT<\/a>) has kindly provided ISPreview.co.uk with some new network traffic data, which shows the average monthly UK data consumption of broadband users across their network for the past 13-months – from September 2020 to October 2021. Interestingly, traffic actually declined through the spring and summer.<\/p>\n

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

In a normal year we’d perhaps also expect to see a steady upward curve propagating through the months, which is because the demand for data is constantly rising and so new peaks of usage are being set all the time. Indeed, this trend was turbocharged during much of 2020, and into early 2021, due to the COVID-19<\/strong> pandemic, which forced a lot of people to work and play from home.<\/p>\n

However, the data for 2021 reveals what happened after the Government began lifting the last of the major COVID-19 lockdowns during the spring and into the summer. Instead of the usual upward curve, Openreach<\/a> sees a fall as people returned to the office (i.e. less of a need for video calls \/ conferencing etc.), schools and begin going on holidays again.<\/p>\n

NOTE:<\/strong> 1 PetaByte is equal to 1,000 TeraBytes (TB) or 1,000,000 GigaBytes (GB).<\/div>\n

Openreach<\/a> UK Network Traffic<\/strong><\/span>
\n(the horizontal axis below reflects the trend across hours, months and years<\/em>)
\n\"Openreach-UK-Network-Traffic-Sep-2020-to-Oct-2021\"<\/p>\n

Openreach were also kind enough to provide a figure for the average daily usage in PetaBytes, as measure across each of the aforementioned months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Months<\/strong><\/td>\nAverage daily usage in PB (PetaBytes)<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Sep-20<\/td>\n147.3607451<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Oct-20<\/td>\n156.4521149<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Nov-20<\/td>\n159.0495583<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Dec-20<\/td>\n170.7722132<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Jan-21<\/td>\n190.6886357<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Feb-21<\/td>\n195.5177799<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Mar-21<\/td>\n180.283659<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Apr-21<\/td>\n171.5023452<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
May-21<\/td>\n161.7191456<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Jun-21<\/td>\n155.2737012<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Jul-21<\/td>\n157.4461938<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Aug-21<\/td>\n163.7920685<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Sep-21<\/td>\n160.728818<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Oct-21<\/td>\n169.9110007<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

A roughly similar trend is seen if we take a look across the same period using aggregated traffic data from the London Internet Exchange<\/a> (LINX), which handles a key chunk of UK and global data traffic through their switches via nearly a thousand members (broadband ISPs, mobile operators etc.). We do see some evidence of this trend in prior years too, but the upward curve of usage is notably flatter during 2021 than before.<\/p>\n

LINX Aggregate Network Traffic<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"LINX-Network-Traffic-Sep-2020-to-Oct-2021\"
\nWe should point out that LINX does not even remotely provide a complete overview of the internet traffic flow from all ISPs (e.g. BT<\/a> alone sees traffic peaks of around 20Tbps vs 5-6Tbps+ for LINX), but they do offer another useful indication of how much extra traffic is flowing around.<\/p>\n

UPDATE 30th Dec 2021<\/strong><\/p>\n

Openreach has just released some more network statistics for the past year, which we’ll paste below.<\/p>\n

Key findings for 2021 broadband use across the Openreach network:<\/strong><\/p>\n