The average New Zealand home and business used 515 gigabytes (GB) of broadband data in October this year, up from 329 GB in 2019, which represents an increase of 57 percent, according to a report from Chorus. However, the average Auckland home and small business increased their data usage by 63 percent, from 379 GB in October 2019 to 619 GB in October 2021, a month that Aucklanders spent entirely in lockdown.
In the first six weeks of the recent lockdown, Chorus says its fixed networks carried more than an exabyte of data, which is more than all the data carried in 2015, the year Netflix launched in New Zealand.
'Largest-ever' performance upgrade for fibre customers
Chorus has also announced its largest-ever performance upgrade for fibre customers. The ‘Big Fibre Boost’ initiative will see Chorus work with broadband retailers to upgrade customers on its wholesale 100 Mbps fibre service this year. Where broadband retailers flow through the upgrade to their residential customers, the change will triple the download speed to 300 Mbps while increasing the upload speed 5-fold from 20 Mbps to 100 Mbps, Chorus said. Two business fibre plans are also set to benefit.
In October, the average download speed across Chorus’ network was 226 Mbps, an increase of 85 percent from the average speed in October 2019. Fibre customers saw a 48 percent increase across that same 2-year period, from 194 Mbps to 288 Mbps.
