Friday, March 27th, 2020 (4:15 pm) - Score 60,667

Broadband and mobile providers EE (BT) and Virgin Media UK have today posted some interesting snapshots to help illustrate how the current spread of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) is impacting the way their customers make use of internet connectivity, which among other things show a big surge during the Prime Minister’s daily briefings.

We’ll start off with UK ISP Virgin Media because they haven’t provided much solid data, only a few percentages that lack good context. Apparently Traffic grew significantly on Monday, the first day of school closures, and this trend continued into Tuesday and beyond but is now “beginning to level out” as a “new normal” emerges.

According to the broadband giant, Daytime downstream traffic surged after the schools closed and has now “more than doubled” when compared to pre-crisis levels, albeit still below the levels experienced in the evening peak (this would normally be when everybody comes home from work and school). Demand during the current evening peak remains broadly in line with traffic levels typically seen before the emergency period.

Meanwhile their upstream traffic volume was over 1Tbps (Terabits per second) during the peak.

Key Details from Virgin Media * Upstream traffic has increased significantly during daytime hours and is up more than 150% on the previous month (mostly due to people working from home, video calling etc.). * Upstream traffic during the evening peak has increased by 50% over the past month for similar reasons. * On Mothering Sunday, Virgin Media saw a spike in upload traffic as many families held video calls with loved ones rather than visit them in person. * During Boris Johnson’s speech on Monday night, Virgin Media saw a sharp drop in downstream traffic as millions of customers watched the Prime Minister speak live on linear television. This was immediately followed by a surge in SMS traffic with 50% more messages being sent than usual. * There was a sharp fall in downstream traffic at 8pm on Thursday night as people stopped watching online video services to applaud NHS workers. This was soon followed by a sharp rise in upstream traffic when people shared videos with friends and family on social media, leading to an “all-time record amount of upstream traffic” on VM’s network.

Despite increased demand for its services, Virgin Media said their network has “ample capacity and is continuing to provide customers with the ultrafast and reliable services they expect at this critical time.”

Meanwhile the situation for EE’s mobile network is a bit different, with the operator reporting that a huge volume of people were using mobile data to tune into the Prime Minister’s daily 5pm briefings (up to 2.5 times the amount of traffic on BBC iPlayer as seen on a typical day).

Similarly when Boris Johnson set the most stringent rules to date at 8.30pm on Monday 23rd March 2020, data traffic on EE’s mobile network increased by more than 5 times, compared to just one hour before.

With more people staying at home, the way we exercise, stay in touch and keep ourselves entertained has also shifted – and mobile data usage reflects that. Closures of gyms and leisure centres mean outdoor exercise is on the up. Data on the Garmin app shows notable spikes compared to a typical week, as more people opt to run and cycle to stay fit.

On top of that, as people are travelling so much less, there has also been a real drop in usage of the apps that are usually popular when people are out and about, including Google Maps, Uber and Lyft.

Meanwhile TikTok the micro video streaming service has become the big growth story of the change in the way people are staying entertained indoors, with users consuming 20% more traffic each compared to the week before.

The millions of people who use WhatsApp are using the software more than ever to stay in touch during social distancing. The busiest peak on the app saw data usage per user double in comparison to a typical week on the EE mobile network.

All of these peaks remain well within the capacity of EE’s network.