Customers of Brit ISP Virgin Media have downloaded an extra 325GB since March, though we can't think why
- Reference: 1592474471
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/06/18/virgin_media_lockdown_data/
- Source link:
On average, Virgin Media customers are downloading an extra 3.4GB per day. Since the start of March – which predates the official UK call for lockdown (23 March), but roughly aligns with mop-haired Prime Minister Boris Johnson's non-binding plea for people to stay home – households have downloaded an extra 325GB on average.
Similarly, upstream traffic was up by 3.7GB per week, undoubtedly a result of the increase in OTT voice and video traffic, as well as an upward swing in online gaming and live-streaming.
The UK ISP, which is set to [1]merge with Telefonica's Brit O2 arm , described April as its busiest month in company history for network traffic, with May's usage only slightly behind.
Virgin Media observed some regional differences, with network traffic in Wales increasing by the lowest amount of all the home nations – namely 10 per cent. The ISP didn't hypothesise about the reason why, although it's plausible that the exodus of students from university towns like Swansea, Bangor, and Aberystwyth contributed.
Northern Ireland, however, proved the complete opposite, with Virgin Media reporting an increase of 58 per cent in upstream traffic sent during evenings. Coronavirus has battered the region, with [2]200,000 people furloughed from a total labour force of nearly 900,000. That figure is reflective of the services-dominated nature of the Northern Irish economy.
Downtime scarcely got a mention in the figures, except for Virgin Media waxing lyrical about the "resiliency" of its network. Some 130 Virgin Media outage instances were reported by customers on [3]Down Detector for March, April, May and so far in June. In comparison, 13 instances were recorded for January and February.
Outages batter UK's Virgin Media into wee hours as broadband failures spike 77% globally [4]READ MORE
Virgin sent us a statement:
"Fears that broadband networks would not be able to cope with increased usage during lockdown have not materialised despite customers using their connections more intensively than ever," it said. "The vast majority of Virgin Media customers are receiving speeds faster than their headline package speed. Our network remains resilient with ample capacity."
Not according to UK comms watchdog Ofcom, which [5]last month claimed average download speeds across the country declined 2 per cent in the week after lockdown, compared to the week ended 8 March. It claimed Virgin Media customers saw the most dramatic drop in download speeds, falling 10 per cent.
Data from network intelligence firm ThousandEyes indicate Virgin Media is not alone, pointing to its data that indicates outages across broadband networks went up 77 per cent year-on-year globally in the week starting 20 April. Digital blackouts in the UK swelled 62 per cent in the days from 13 to 19 April. ®
Sponsored: [6]Free Hands-on Training: Google Cloud Run Serverless
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/07/virgin_media_and_o2_merger/
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-53008172
[3] https://downdetector.co.uk/status/virgin-media/archive/2020/03/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/28/virgin_media_outages/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/14/broadband_speeds_uk_march/
[6] https://go.theregister.com/tl/1956/-9051/free-hands-on-training-google-cloud-run-serverless?td=wptl1956
That's a lot of porn. I'd book an appointment with SpecSavers if I were you.
181GB or 325GB amateurs, stream that in minutes with Plex to ahem, friends and family ;)
Indeed so. My lockdown hobby has been downloading 'content' onto my plex server, and finally transfering stuff off my Humax boxen.
Stand by...
for VM to increase its prices as soon as they are allowed.
Why?
Boss: We are carrying lots of data now. That demand means popularity means... we can increase our prices. Those numpties who use our service won't want to their net access to be throttled back now would they?
Make it so!
I'm not saying that is the case but my neighbours have been finding their bit of 1990's NTL copper coax straining under the load since early march.
Re: Stand by...
But..but..but... surely it isnt copper ? The ads all say its superfast fibre ?
And this 325 GB is made up of??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTJvdGcb7Fs
Re: And this 325 GB is made up of??
2 Mac OS updates
I did not know that PornHub actually used that much bandwidth. I am shocked. SHOCKED I tell you.
"Upstream traffic was up by 3.7GB per week"
That's a baffler, as upload speed with VM is limited to approx 6% of your download package.
So if like me you have 100 Mbps download, you get max 6 Mbps upload which is much worse upload than a half decent FTTC or mobile connection.
Not really...
All those Meet/Zoom/Skype etc. conferences would account for that much on its own. And they loosened a lot of restrictions because of that.
I think it is more like 10%. We had 100 down and 10 up. In April I switched to 200 down and 20 up. Not for the download speed, as 100 is plenty for us, but the upload so that two of us could have video meetings at the same time with a bit of overhead. The last speed test I did gave us about 22 up.
Best wishes,
Bob
3.7GB per week is only 0.05Mbps average. Even if you assume it's all concentrated into one hour of activity per day, that's only 1.2Mbps during that hour.
So even with only 6Mbps upstream capacity, most people would have plenty of headroom for such an increase, I'd have thought.
Amateurs, I downloaded 181gb this morning alone for something 59 hours and 7 minutes long in chronological order by scene.