The company’s latest annual data recap revealed that broadband traffic increased by around 9% across the UK during 2023, to a total of 94,722 Petabytes (PB) in data. One Petabyte equals one million Gigabytes, with a 4K-quality movie drawing on around 7.2 Gigabytes per hour when streamed.

While the UK’s lowest month for broadband data usage was in June, when just shy of 7,300 PBs were used, the numbers were at their highest in December with nearly 9,000 PBs of data being consumed. Across the year, online events and releases — not least Amazon Prime’s coverage of the Premier League, and the release of downloads for gaming titles such as Call of Duty — led to significant peaks in data usage.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the busiest day overall across the Openreach network was Boxing Day. Drivers such as people streaming movies, boxsets, and football matches, setting up and using new devices, and utilising broadband to contact friends and family, contributed to 342 PBs of data being utilised.

The second busiest day of 2023 was the following day, Wednesday 27 December, when 330 PBs of data was consumed. The third busiest, with 319 PBs of data being made use of, was the day after that, Thursday 28 December.

The telecoms firm’s annual recap also shows that, across the whole of last year, the busiest day of the week was usually a Sunday, while the busiest time on the network was normally between 8pm and 9pm.

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Trevor Linney, the director of network technology at Openreach, noted that the firm’s numbers on broadband data can provide a holistic view of domestic usage. “The Openreach network is the biggest in the UK, and we carry broadband traffic for hundreds of broadband companies. This gives us the full picture.”

“We believe that our insights are some of the best and most comprehensive available,” he said.

Linney also noted how surges in UK data usage are largely underpinned by online gaming and real-time sports coverage. “We’re seeing a real pattern starting to emerge in these annual reports, with live sports and gaming at the heart of huge jumps in data usage,” he specified.

One of the last occasions DIGIT reported on Openreach and broadband was at the beginning of December 2023, when the company announced a new £50 million investment to bring full fibre to an additional 167,000 homes across Scotland.