Sports helped beef up network as data usage climbs.
Watching sport seems to have been one of the significant triggers for the soaring rate of data usage in New Zealand homes.
As average monthly household data usage on fibre reached a new national high in September at 554 gigabytes (Gb), the external relations manager for telecommunications company Chorus, Steve Pettigrew, believes some of the reasons for the spike can be traced back to coverage of a major world event, the 2019 rugby World Cup.
“Because Spark Sport won the streaming rights to the tournament, the industry was forced to do a lot of work to bring the broadband network up to sufficient capacity to handle the demand,” he says. “Rugby, and all live sport is a different dynamic from streaming movies or television shows.
“Netflix is not live, but if you’re watching the All Blacks, or any live sports event, it adds an extra burden on the network to perform well.
“While the Covid pandemic was a massive trigger for data usage, there’s no doubt ensuring Kiwis could watch the rugby in 2019 with as little interruption as possible helped us get the network into better shape.”
Pettigrew says there has been “a lot of growing up” in broadband since then. Monthly household internet data use on fibre tripled between 2016 and 2020 and has continued to rise. In October 2019 the average stood at 329Gb; by October 2021 it had risen to 515Gb and today sits at 554Gb.
Usage through copper networks has also risen - up from just under 200Gb in September 2019 to 290Gb at September 2022.
Data use is also increasing because of better technology: “What many people may not realise is that even if your time online hasn’t increased, data consumption is still increasing as devices and apps become more sophisticated,” he says.
“If you were using Facebook in 2011, it was just a webpage with text and some low resolution photos and you would have had to browse over 1000 pages to consume one gigabyte of data.
“Fast-forward 10 years, the same Facebook page is now full of autoplay video; you are still browsing the same site, but it is easy to use over one gigabyte in under an hour.”
Pettigrew says gaming and entertainment streaming on channels like Youtube, Netflix and TVNZ1 are big users of data. “We notice a big surge in use around 3pm when kids get home from school. This lasts until around 6pm before another peak between 8 and 10pm.”
While entertainment is big, people working from home is also making a difference, contributing to spikes in usage after breakfast time. People using video calling to keep in touch with family and friends, children doing homework and those scrolling social media are other factors.
“All this drives demand for more data and faster and reliable fibre broadband,” he says. “It’s hard to imagine how much more we’ll be doing online in five years and how intricate technology will be, but by setting up on a reliable and consistently fast fibre plan, people will be well and truly set up for screen time.”
Pettigrew says broadband speeds are also increasing. In 2011, 30 megabytes per second (Mbps) was considered a great speed. By 2015 this increased to 100Mbps and, following the Chorus ‘Big Fibre Boost’ in 2021, the average download speed across its network hit 226Mbps.
As a result of these increases, New Zealand’s mobile and fixed broadband speed was ranked 16th fastest in the world in the December 2022 Speedtest Global Index which ranks speeds from around the world.
Pettigrew says it’s a good idea for people to shop around as not all broadband plans are equal. If there are three or more streaming in a household, a plan offering 300Mbps and above is probably most suitable. “But, it might be 50Mbps is right, so it’s worth checking what’s available, much like we do when researching an energy supplier.”
To find out how much data is used in your household use the Chorus data calculator at: www.chorus.co.nz/data-calculator