A short OECD study of Internet use during the Covid-19 crisis shows that traffic through Internet exchange points, where networks interconnect, has jumped by as much as 60% in OECD countries as a majority of people are now working, studying, streaming movies and video games, and holding social video calls from their homes.

The study finds that despite the surges in usage also reported by Internet operators, and content and application providers, network operators have been able to maintain broadband services by either making more efficient use of existing capacity or by adding new capacity.

The study says that to reduce the risk of Internet outages it is important to:

• Make sure mobility restrictions do not prevent engineers carrying out critical operations in data-centres, at critical infrastructure locations and at customer sites, including people’s homes.
• Ensure the continuity of hardware supplies, particularly where there are border closures.
• Alleviate congestion in mobile networks by temporarily releasing additional spectrum or by approving temporary commercial spectrum transactions between providers that put unused spectrum into service.
• Lighten administrative burdens to help operators deploy networks rapidly.

You can read the study at this link. This is one of a series of papers available on the OECD’s Coronavirus Hub, which is being updated daily with new data, analysis and recommendations on Covid-related topics ranging from economic impacts to education and social issues.

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