The new world of social distancing and quarantining led to record-high Sunday broadband traffic on Easter, based on per-user consumption levels, according to OpenVault.
The firm said that on the holiday – which was April 12 — downstream consumption hit 16.3 GB per subscriber. This was an increase of 15.8% over Sunday, April 5, when each consumer used 14.1 GB of data. It further outstripped traffic on March 1 – immediately before social distancing requirements hit – when 11.8 GB of data was used in the downstream. That amount was 37.9% less than the amount on Easter.
Record-High Sunday Broadband Traffic
Upstream consumption on the holiday was 0.97 GB, a 18.6% increase over the previous upstream high of 0.81 GB on April 5 and 51.7% over the 0.64% logged on March 1. Overall, Easter consumption was 17.3 GB per subscriber, which beat the previous Sunday per subscriber high for total consumption (15.97 GB) and downstream consumption (15.17 GB) that were set on March 22.
“While we don’t track specific types of activity, I can tell you that videoconferencing absolutely contributed to data usage in the Trudeau household,” OpenVault CEO and founder Mark Trudeau said in a press release about the Sunday broadband traffic record. “Given the day and the profile of the usage, it’s safe to assume that much of the spike OpenVault saw was due to individuals and families conducting virtual Easter Sunday visits to friends and relatives.”
Obviously, the pandemic is having massive impact on the total amount and profile of broadband usage. Plume told Telecompetitor last week that the number of households active online during the work-day increased from 22.6 million to 46.2 million between January and early April. The company tracks active online households in 14 key metros. The firm did say that traffic appeared to have plateaued.
OpenVault echoed Plume’s view that traffic may have plateaued in early April. The firm found that traffic during the March 30 to April 3 week declined in quarantined areas by 5.80% compared to the March 23 to March 27 week.
Image courtesy of flickr user Sean MacEntee.
