The UK governments Chancellor, George Osborne, helped to kick start a surge in daytime business internet traffic during Wednesday lunchtime when he gave the annual UK Budget 2011 announcement.

Business ISP Star reported that network traffic from its 3,500 business customers increased by +18.52% above normal during the speech, as employees logged on during work hours to watch the event unfold.


The traffic reportedly spiked at 13:00hrs as post-budget reaction and analysis was streamed live on news sites, with workers keen to find out how this year's tax and spending plans would affect them. Star claims that high bandwidth intensive applications, such as live HD TV streaming, can consume "as much as 1.5Gb" per hour.