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[Black Sheep]

From our Chief Engineer .............

I'm delighted to share that we’ve recently published our first ever Openreach Fibre Index which shows how data usage across our fibre connections is growing 40% year on year. The Fibre Index will be updated seasonally and it’s already revealing a few interesting insights into the UK’s fibre broadband habits, like how just a quarter of homes and businesses account for 75% of the total data consumed over the network in an average month.

Over the last five years, average download speeds and broadband usage have surged. While it’s not surprising to see that total data usage continues to grow, the pace and scale of growth and adoption is extraordinary.  Over half of UK households have at least two different internet enabled devices and nearly a third has seven or more, all usually connected at the same time.  And now with the rapid growth of Smart TVs all needing a fast broadband connection, what we can see is that consumers and businesses will demand even more from fibre.

This summer, data usage peaked on 23 August. During that week we saw the World Athletics Championship, the Belgian Grand Prix, and several major news stories break which may well have contributed to this rise in data consumption. We also saw usage peak during the evening on Sundays, perhaps when people are catching up on box-sets or Skyping friends and family.

I’m proud the work by our Openreach engineers is enabling millions of people to connect with each other in new ways and at a faster rate than ever before. Our fibre network is more than able to deliver the speed and capacity that people need both today and for years to come. The roll out of our fibre broadband network will be one of the great British success stories in history. It underpins our network cornerstone and plays a key part in our mission to build Britain’s connected future.

See more here ........... http://www.homeandwork.openreach.co.uk/fibre-index

[burakkucat]

Thank you for sharing that message. 

(Even though the grumpy cat gave black looks towards the usage of certain words and phrases.    )

[NewtronStar]

This summer, data usage peaked on 23 August. During that week we saw the World Athletics Championship, the Belgian Grand Prix, and several major news stories break which may well have contributed to this rise in data consumption. We also saw usage peak during the evening on Sundays, perhaps when people are catching up on box-sets or Skyping friends and family.

I did wonder why the Sky Go on the F1 channel was buffering every minute it was useless and just gave up watching it.

[WWWombat]

All information on the progress & use of NGA gratefully received

A rise in the average from 50 GB to 190 GB. Not bad... The surprising numbers need to be pulled from the base ones...

190GB averaged over 5 million lines is a total of 950 Petabytes.

The top 25% use 75% of this data: 1.25m lines and 712 PB, or 570 GB on average.
The bottom 75% use 25% of this data: 3.75m lines and 238 PB, or 63 GB on average.

There are some *very* different habits going on between those groups! And the top group is too big to be defined as irregular users; I suspect the difference comes down to the amount of IP video being watched habitually.

[Weaver]

 

[kitz]

Just seen this - thanks BS

Re the average usage of 190GB it's not quite clear if that is per month, it looks like it may be for the 3 month period June - Aug 2015 which would be 63GB per month?

[WWWombat]

Yeah, I missed that.

Just looking back at the graphic, it gives another metric of 17 hrs of HD video per week. I make that over 70 hours per month.

What's the going rate for HD video now? 2-3GB per hour?

If so, that would be 140-210GB for the 70Hrs in one month ... Suggesting the 190GB usage is indeed a figure for one month, not three.

[Ronski]

The graph at the top of the page states average monthly usage.

[kitz]

Ahh.  Thank you for that Ron. 

Now Im even more confused - is that showing 350GB or what?

On reflection wombat seems about right for his calculations for HD video...  but its still unclear as it says "In the summer (June - Aug 2015) [snip] Average superfast broadband use per line 190GB.    How to confuse a kitz     

[WWWombat]

The graph at the top tells you it is monthly usage, but conveniently fails to put units to the Y-axis.

With the label "100 = the traffic levels for 2012", I think that makes the graph purely relative to Dec 2012, and not specifically in GB.

If relative, it probably means "current" traffic is 350% of that in December 2012.

However, the statement of 40% year-on-year growth doesn't match that. It takes 4 years of 40% growth to get from 100 to 385; We're close to 3 years since Dec 2012 ... so the relative traffic ought to "only" be 275.

A clowder of confused kitties! (bonus points if you didn't need to look that one up)

[WWWombat]

I just tried an experiment...

Here's what DSLstats registers as the traffic level for an hour-ish of an HD stream for an Amazon Fire TV device.
It is followed by an hour of an HD stream from BT sports ... but, as that is multicast, it doesn't get into DSLstats stats.

That graph looks like a fairly steady rate of 80,000 kB per min, or just under 5GB per hour.

I wonder if it would be worth logging the inbound multicast rate, as well as the inbound unicast?

[kitz]

If it helps, I stream a lot from BBC i-player.
 
From past tests one of their HD streams via LAN would average about 3.5Mbps* = 12600 Mb per hour = 1.56 GB per hour.  From memory that seems about right to what VMBU showed on Plusnet which was around 1.5GB during a HDstream or just slightly over half that for normal stream.  Unfortunately VMBU stopped working for me a few months ago so I cant check now.  :/




*i-player reports  2.75 Mbps for their HD stream, but DUMeter also records overheads.

[kitz]

However, the statement of 40% year-on-year growth doesn't match that. It takes 4 years of 40% growth to get from 100 to 385; We're close to 3 years since Dec 2012 ... so the relative traffic ought to "only" be 275.

I also tried that train of thought and couldnt get the figures to match up either :/