Last week, as widely reported in the mainstream media, the UK’s collective broadband traffic reached record levels.
There has been a lot of speculation as to what caused the spike, which at its busiest point reached a new peak of 29 terabits per second (Tb/s).
Both BT and EE told us that the release of the new Call of Duty game was partly responsible, but this is somewhat strange given that the most recent Call of Duty game – called Modern Warfare 2 – was released all the way back in October 2022.
The real reason for this traffic peak seems to in fact be related to streaming – specifically the recent Arsenal, Manchester City and Chelsea games respectively. Some of these Premier League games were streamed with BT Sport and others were likely streamed illegally.
Illegal streaming has been around for years, but few experts are willing to predict solid figures. Some estimates, such as this one by CrimeStoppers, suggests that around 30% of all UK internet traffic is being used for illegal streaming. As the cost-of-living crisis grows, more and more Britons are looking to save money where they can –illegally streaming football games seems to be on the increase, as it means users can avoid paying up to £28 a month for the likes of Sky Sports.
A new bandwidth record
The broadband traffic easily beat the previous record of 25.2 Tb/s on the network, which was registered between 18 and 20 October last year. Incidentally this date would better tie in with the newest Call of Duty game release.
As with Arsenal’s defeat to Manchester City, that was driven by demand to watch Premier League football that was only available in the UK to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
“As more and more people use the internet to not only stream football games but to also play in record numbers, the infrastructure strain increases and things get more and more pressurised. We strongly suspect that, at some point in 2023, we will see 40 Terabits per second being reached,” said James Moreston from Broadband.Deals, a price comparison service for broadband packages.
As to whether the UK’s aging broadband and fibre network can handle such speeds, remains to be seen.
