Chorus says November household broadband usage jumped 35%

Chorus says November household broadband usage jumped 35%

By Jenny Ruth

Dec. 17 (BusinessDesk) - The average household broadband usage in November was more than 35 percent higher than a year earlier, with homes in Porirua leading the way, Chorus says.

The telecommunications lines business says the average home nationally used about 234 gigabytes of broadband data in November, the equivalent of watching almost 80 hours of content on Netflix, and up from 172GB in November last year.

Porirua homes consumed an average of 274GB per household.

“Most homes across the country now have several connected devices going at any one time,” says Chorus network strategy manager Kurt Rodgers.

“With voice-activated smart devices such as Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa now becoming commonplace, we’re using far more data and requiring faster, more dependable broadband speeds,” Rodgers says.

“People’s viewing habits have shifted online and it’s no longer just down to Netflix. TVNZ now have online only, on demand content, while Freeview has just launched an industry-first device that brings free-to-air content onto a streaming platform.”

The gaming industry is also booming and in July Chorus experienced the biggest ever data spike on its network due to people downloading the latest version of Fortnite, Rodgers says.

“New Zealand has already seen dramatic improvements in broadband, thanks to the ultra-fast broadband fibre rollout and the rural broadband initiative,” he says.

“While fibre is the fastest form of broadband technology, for areas where it’s not yet available, VDSL on the Chorus copper network provides a faster, more reliable service with less buffering than regular ADSL.”

(BusinessDesk)

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