Christmas is known as a time of excess eating and drinking, and the National Broadband Network estimates that will translate into internet access with Boxing Day becoming the busiest day on the system.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
With Australians connecting more devices to the internet and consuming more data every year, NBN claims data consumption the day after Christmas will spike by 70 per cent.
This forecast doesn't estimate mobile networks internet access.
Last Boxing Day, NBN registered an average amount of data consumed per household of 11.8GB, which meant a 69 per cent increase on the daily average of 6.98GB per household during 2018.
It is understood that watching a movie for an hour consumes one-to-three GB per hour depending on the quality of the image.
The hungriest consumers registered by NBN in 2019 live in Queensland and consumed 26,807 in June alone.
"Based on previous trends and coupled with smart tech becoming the new norm, we anticipate there will be more data consumed this Christmas than ever before," NBN chief technology officer Ray Owen said.
Real-time video streaming is one of the leading factors dominating data consumption, with web browsing a close second.
Peak-time on the NBN access network is between 7pm and 11pm, the company said, with Wednesdays and Sundays being the busiest days on the network.
The reasons NBN finds behind this surge on data use are the tendency to browsing and streaming activities in families get-togethers, as well as the increasing amount of household devices connected to the internet.
"There is a clear growing interest among Australians in making their homes smarter with the average number of connected devices rising from 18 this year to 21 next year," Telsyte managing director Foad Fadaghi said.
Data gathered by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2017 showed the mean number of devices used to access the internet at home was 6.2.
The impact of new devices given as Christmas gifts connecting to the network for the first time in Boxing Day and downloading relevant software is believed to play a crucial role too.
NBN expects the number of internet-connected devices to increase by 14 per cent in 2020.
This would mean a total growth in the number of connected devices from 186 million to 212 million in 2020, according to NBN.
This growth would confirm the Australian Digital Inclusion Index figures, which claimed Aussies are spending more time online and connecting, although more than 2.5 million are still not online.
The 2019 index also pointed out at the uptake of NBN fixed broadband services as a key factor underpinning the nationwide improvement in access.
Rural Australians had a proportionately greater uptake of NBN fixed broadband services than their city counterparts.
Australian Associated Press
