Covid 19 coronavirus: Lockdown fuels another surge in broadband - and a Saturday night quirk

Broadband spiked as people moved more files around and videochatted more as the fourth lockdown hit - but with more people prepared, it was less than previous level changes. Image / 123rf

The fourth lockdown produced another big spike in broadband use.

But with Aucklanders and the country as a whole getting used to the drill, it was less than the kick-off of previous level 3 and 4 efforts.

Chorus, which operates most of our broadband networks, said traffic peaked at 1.58 terabits per second at midday yesterday, an increase of 40 per cent on last week. The Auckland region saw a 71 per cent uplift in traffic, while the rest of New Zealand increased by 9 per cent.

Internet traffic over the weekend painted a picture of our lives. Check out the dip in traffic at 9pm on Sat as people tuned in to the PM's press conference. Then data use surged to 20 petabytes - a new record for the year! pic.twitter.com/um9Wl7M1zy

— Chorus NZ (@ChorusNZ) March 1, 2021

The UFB fibre operator also flagged an interesting traffic pattern on Saturday night, when internet use dropped markedly as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and director general of health Ashley Bloomfield gave a televised address announcing the level change at 9pm - then surging again after the press conference wrapped up.

No broadband issues were reported. It helped that most people who can work from home are now setup. Tens of thousands of preparatory Zoom calls were not required.

While a major spike, it was down on the 1.75 Tbps recorded on the Monday of the third lockdown - which itself was nowhere near day two of the first lockdown, which saw the deluge of fast internet data hit a record 3.03 Tbps, which Chorus said was the equivalent to 600,000 movies being streamed at once - and close to the maximum capacity of its network of around 3.5 Tbps.

Before various records were set during lockdown 1, the previous high was 2.6 Tbps during the Rugby World Cup 2019.

But while Monday's peak traffic was a relatively modest 1.58 terabits per second, or the entire day data travelling across the Chorus network reached 20 petabytes, a figure last seen during the March 2020 lockdown. This amount of data is equivalent to over six million hours of streaming television in high definition in a single day, Chorus says.