Broadband ISP BT Sees UK Network Traffic Peak at 28Tbps
Tuesday, Jul 5th, 2022 (1:50 pm) - Score 4,944
Telecoms giant BT has posted a new update on their current network plans and performance, which among other things reveals that data and internet traffic over their fixed network (broadband and Ethernet) recently hit a new peak of 28Tbps (Terabits per second) during their busiest hour (up from 25Tbps at the end of 2021).
The story for BT’s mobile network (EE) is naturally somewhat less impressive – at least when compared with fixed lines, with the operator reporting a peak of 1Tbps (up from 0.8Tbps a year earlier). But that’s to be expected because most mobile users consume significantly less data than fixed line users (predominantly via Smartphones when outside the house), which is something that Ofcom echoed in its Connection Nations report.
NOTE: Back in December 2012 BT reported achieving a fixed traffic peak of 622Gbps, which jumped to 1.086Tbps in December 2013 and 10.37Tbps by April 2018. The BT and EE merger in 2016 may have also had an impact.
According to the regulator, the average monthly data volume per household on fixed broadband connections increased over the past year to 453 GigaBytes (up from 429GB last year, 315GB in 2019 and 241GB in 2018). By comparison, the average usage per mobile data user was up by 27% last year to 4.5GB per month.