Communications Minister Paul Fletcher will convene a meeting of executives from NBN Co, Telstra, Optus and other telcos later today. The meeting will discuss how the national broadband network (NBN) will cope with the expected rise in usage due to the coronavirus outbreak. The NBN is seeing large numbers of Australians being directed to work from home, while use of streaming services is expected to increase as people self-isolate or stay home because sports matches and other events are cancelled:
NBN Co said it had already seen a rise in demand during both working hours and the peak evening usage period, and was anticipating this to reach “unprecedented” levels as the virus spread. Telstra warned customers increased traffic could lead to slower-than-usual services.
…large volumes of traffic that usually travel along corporate or institutional networks will suddenly shift either to the NBN’s residential network or to legacy ADSL networks.
A NBN Co statement said: “With more people working, studying and generally spending more time at home streaming content, we are seeing a change in the profile of data traffic on the NBN, with increasing residential usage of the network throughout the day and in the busy hours (7-11pm).
According to the NBN Co, the average download a day across Australia was close to 7GB last year, but peaked at 12GB on Boxing Day. Thus, we should expect residential downloads to easily exceed these figures for an extended period, which will place undue strain on the NBN’s already stretched infrastructure.
A lot will depend on what type of connection households have. If you are one of the lucky few with a fibre-to-the-premises connection, you should be sweet. But if you are one of the majority with fibre-to-the-node or fibre-to-the-kerb connections, performance will largely depend on the length and quality of the copper line connecting to your home. That is, the worse the line, the slower the download speed, other things equal.
Wireless 4G connections will also suffer from increasing congestion. According to NBN Co’s latest statistics, about one third of people on fixed wireless 4G connections receive speeds of only 3Mbps to 25Mbps during the busy times. But over the self-quarantine period, congestion would reduce download speeds even further.
Then there is the issue of upload speeds. With more people working from home, and needing to send large files, congestion is also likely to worsen, driving down average speeds.
In short, Australia’s broadband infrastructure is about to experience its biggest stress test to date.
