Data demand in Western Australia has surged more than 50 per cent since the state government introduced broad social distancing measures, according to latest figures from NBN Co.
Network insights released today looked at peak download times on the main NBN wholesale service on three separate Fridays, including national holiday Good Friday.
NBN recorded how many gigabits, or 1,000 megabits of data, were being downloaded per second.
The network said 860 gigabits-per-second (Gbps) were downloaded at 11am on Friday April 17, a regular business day when many Australians were working and educating from home, compared with 580Gbps recorded at the same time on Friday February 28.
Peak download throughput remained between 40 per cent and 50 per cent between 9am and 2pm on April 17, with the highest increase of 53 per cent occurring at 2pm.
NBN says the insights demonstrate the change social distancing has made during business hours on the network’s main wholesale service.
Peak download throughput surged higher on Good Friday when WA recorded 1,090Gbps of data at 11am, up 70 per cent on the corresponding time on February 28.
By 2pm, traffic was up 101 per cent.
NBN says largest peaks in data demand occurred at around 9pm each night.
Head of corporate and community affairs WA and SA, Jane McNamara, said the figures provided an insight into how working, education and lifestyle arrangements for many Western Australians had changed since broad social distancing measures were introduced in March.
“Public holidays often see an increase in data consumption but we can see from the increase on 3 April compared to the pre-COVID-19 baseline that Australians are increasingly relying on fast and secure broadband during business hours at home,” she said.
“We have implemented measures to assist internet providers with the acquisition of additional capacity, waiving charges for additional capacity of up to 40 per cent to internet providers for at least three months.”
