‘Peak day’ business services broadband consumption has more than doubled in both the upstream and the downstream as workplace environments have reopened after the pandemic, according to the latest OpenVault Broadband Insights (OVBI) report.

OpenVault’s analysis of data collected by the company’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) network management and monitoring solutions indicates that peak day usage by business subscribers has risen 102.6 per cent in the upstream and 105 per cent in the downstream, respectively, since the end of 2021. Peak day usage is defined as the day of the week that experiences the highest average usage in a given category.

The Q1 2025 OVBI offers the sharpest insight to date into how usage profiles vary across business and residential sectors. In addition to an overview of usage at large, the Q1 2025 report explores peak usage trends by year, by day, and by hour in an effort to help the industry anticipate spikes, particularly in upstream traffic.

Key data points from Q1 2025 include:

• Overall consumption grew by 9.5 per cent in Q1 2025 to 663.2 GB, the largest rate of increase since 2022.
• Monthly average upstream usage grew 17.6 per cent in Q1 2025 to 47.5 GB, the highest Q1 year-over-year growth since 2021.
• The percentage of super power users consuming more than 2TB of data per month has increased by approximately 30X over the past seven years, from 0.16 per cent in 2018 to 4.88 per cent in Q1 of this year.

This edition of the OVBI also explores how individual users shift from one usage tier to another from quarter to quarter. A Usage Tier Volatility Index shows that users are more likely to move among tiers as usage rises: only 14 per cent of subscribers in the 0-100 GB tier move to a different level in the next month, while 39 per cent of power users of 1 TB or more per month transitioned to a different tier. Between February and March, 2025 23.4 per cent of subscribers changed usage tiers.

“These trends, together with a sharp rise in the ranks of super power users of 2TB or more per month, are creating an unpredictable environment for broadband providers,” the report notes. ”Whether it’s peak usage spikes, sudden migration to higher consumption patterns, or the emergence of marquee streaming events that will tax broadband capacity, providers can be prepared for these challenges by proactively managing networks and optimizing capacity using PNM and PMA technologies.”

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Tags: broadband, covid, openvault