Much as it pains the Herald to report another All Blacks loss ... Photo / Andrew Cornaga, photosport.nz
Much as it pains the Herald to report another All Blacks loss ... Photo / Andrew Cornaga, photosport.nz
New Zealand broadband use recently spiked to an all-time high - beating even the lockdown surges.
There have been two notable bulges recently: one centred on the Rugby World Cup final, the other around a new release of a popular game: the multiplayer kill-fest Fortnite.
Sky TV reported at itsannual meeting yesterday that the Rugby World Cup generated more than seven million streams.
Chorus, which operates most of the UFB fibre network, saw a huge bump in activity on Sunday morning, October 29, as the All Blacks took on the Springboks at the Stade de France.
“Traffic on the fibre network saw a big surge from 7.45am until 10.30. The peak was at 9.45am with 2.6tbps [terabits per second] on the fibre network. This was 800Gbps [gigabits per second] higher than normal, or an uplift of 31 per cent. This amount of traffic is equivalent to 200,000 individual video streams,” said Chorus comms manager Steve Pettigrew.
But much as it pains the Herald to report another All Blacks loss, the World Cup spike, while a Sunday morning record-setter, didn’t even top usual evening traffic - and it was blitzed by the release of a new version of Fortnite, Season OG, on the evening of Friday, November 3, which was accompanied by an avalanche of viral memes about the update on TikTok.
“On Friday at 9pm, we observed an unprecedented peak in network traffic, with throughput surging to 4.9 terabits per second. This spike followed the much-anticipated release of Fortnite’s latest season,” Pettigrew said.
“The new peak represents a 1.5 terabit per second increase over Thursday’s peak traffic figures. Chorus’ fibre network handled the demand without any signs of congestion.”
That it took a surge to 4.9tbps to set a new record shows how far, and fast, our broadband consumption has increased amid the new normal of many white-collar employees working from home a couple of days a week, and primetime more and more meaning streaming time, whether it’s Netflix, TVNZ+ or one of the many new contenders.
Fortnite OG. Image / Epic Games
Even though they were gobsmacking at the time, we’re now far beyond the early Covid highs.
On March 16, 2020, as the first lockdown hit, traffic surged to 2.24tpbs (at the time, Chorus put its ceiling at 3.5tbps).
After behind-the-scenes discussions, the biggest bandwidth hog, Netflix, agreed to cut its bit rate - or the amount of internet bandwidth it consumes, which in turn underpins video quality - by 25 per cent (it returned to its full rate four months later on July 21).
On March 3, 2021, amid the new normal of Zooming, Chorus saw another record as a Fortnite release saw traffic peak at 3.15tbps.
“While a throughput ceiling of 3.5tbps was advised in advance of Rugby World Cup [the 2019 World Cup , streamed by Spark Sport], we’re continuously adding capacity and currently estimate we can handle a nationwide peak of at least 4.5tbps without experiencing any congestion issues,” a Chorus spokeswoman said at the time.
Today, Chorus no longer issues advisories on its bandwidth ceiling.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
