Openreach may have just passed the 50% full fibre footprint mark, and with competitors the UK full fibre footprint higher up at 73% but the majority of the public are still using part fibre services such as VDSL2 or coax/fibre hyrid. This means that the latest figures showing 2024 had a 10.5% higher traffic volume compared to 2023 is likely to be broken in 2025 as more people sign up to full-fibre and 4K and large digital game downloads become easier.
Sunday 1st December 2024 was the busiest day of 2024 when the rush for online shopping generated by Black Friday deals and a big update for Fortnite coincided. One would think that online shopping would not be that data heavy, but for larger (size or money) purchases people will invariably be doing things such as watching video reviews as well as checking pricing.
Online streaming of football matches also features heavily, and repeats spikes in activity we’ve seen during the course of 2024 from sources such as LINX.
Detail of the busiest points during 2024 using the Openreach network:
- The busiest day across the Openreach network was Sunday, December 1st, when 405 Pb of data was consumed. This was unusually high due to a surge in online spending as people sought ‘Black Friday’ bargains, and people downloaded the latest content update for popular online multi-player game Fortnite.
- The 2nd busiest day was Thursday 26th December, which was due to new gaming consoles being used, and 8 Premier league games being streamed on Amazon Prime. More than 367 Pb of data was consumed across the Openreach network.
- The next busiest day was Sunday November 24th, when 355 Pb of data was consumed.
- The busiest months in 2024 were December at a usage of 9,707 Pb, an 8.5% rise on December 2023 and November at 8,953 Pb – an 8% increase on November 2023.
- The busiest day of the week is typically a Sunday.
- The busiest time on the network is usually between 8pm and 10pm
- The busiest hour during the festive period was between 20:00 and 21:00 on the 26th December.
- Live football (Amazon Prime) and online gaming continue to have the greatest impact on UK’s broadband consumption.
Fast, reliable connectivity is essential for the UK, and the increased traffic on our broadband network is evidence that customers are increasingly reliant on it in their daily lives.
While over a third of properties have already switched, there’s plenty of room for more people to get a better connection right now. So why not check if you could get faster – and potentially cheaper – broadband today.
Clive Selley, CEO, Openreach
The long nights and generally dull weather along with school holidays explain why December is such a data hungry month, the school summer holidays are diluted by more people going on holiday or family day trips.
A decade ago TV viewing over the Christmas period was much more tied to the actual broadcast time and while some TV events do generate large numbers of customers for live viewing with Wallace and Gromit returning this Christmas and the conclusion of Gavin and Stacey there is a lot more freedom via the various catch-up services such as BBC iPlayer to watch shows when you want to.
TV streaming was of course possible using older VDSL2 (FTTC) products but the slower speeds meant on a busy day that activities could conflict e.g. kids downloading fortnite while parents want to stream a TV show or film. Full fibre if you buy a 100 Mbps or faster package will handle multiple activities better, and the busiest households may find Gigabit or faster is worth the monthly cost to ensure no conflicts arise over bandwidth consumption.
Online gaming features so much be it Fortnite or Call of Duty due to the large updates issued regularly or for the Call of Duty franchise when a new game is launched the digital download can exceed 100 GB in size. A more normal update size for Fortnite can vary from 4GB to 30GB and if you have a 30 Mbps connection the larger update would take over 2 hours to download, versus just 8 minutes on a 500 Mbps service. The actual update process will take longer usually as the downloaded data is unpacked on the games console/PC and many game updates if you have Gigabit connectivity are constrained by the game servers rather than your broadband.
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“The busiest day of the week is typically a Sunday” it always has been as far back as I can remember. Even back to my days on CompuServe (those were the days when you could struggle to get on, or had to use alternate nodes). I’ve never fully understood why other than perhaps ‘it’s the last day of the week and I’ve done all my chores so I might as well go online’. Surprising that it’s still a thing these days.
Shops shut early so more people home earlier in the day?
Possibly just more people at home generally on a Sunday evening. Maybe people go out then to socialise less than other days of the week.