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Sure sees a 37% increase in home broadband usage since lockdown
Sure continues to play a critical role in providing connectivity for the community and has recorded a 37% increase in home broadband traffic since the Government of Jersey announced the lockdown on 30 March.
With many islanders required to work or study from home and practice social distancing, Sure has reported a dramatic increase in home broadband traffic from an average usage of 85GB a week to 117GB a week per household. The community is also staying in touch over the phone regularly, with calls on mobile phones doubling during the lockdown period.
Despite a huge increase in demand and a dramatic change in home broadband consumption, Sure’s network has met the increased demand and continues to have spare capacity. Prior to the lockdown, peak hours for home broadband were between 5pm and 11pm as people returned from school and work and went online at home. Sure’s network usage data has revealed that the hours of high traffic volume have spread out across the day from 10am until 11pm.
According to the data, the demand for home broadband has also increased in the evening during lockdown as islanders stay in touch with their loved ones using the internet instead of face-to-face contact and watch popular TV streaming services.
Graham Hughes, chief executive at Sure Jersey, said: “We're proud that Sure’s infrastructure has been able to easily absorb this increase in traffic and continues to help keep the community connected with the huge shift to working and studying from home.
“We’ve been working with Digital Jersey, the Government of Jersey and other local providers to increase the speed of fibre broadband connections to 1Gbit/s at no extra cost so that we can keep our island community connected at this challenging time.”
“We have introduced a number of measures to ensure that we can help support the community and stay resilient such as launching a home delivery service and a range of home schooling packages, doubling the number of advisors on our webchat customer support and increasing the support for those directly and indirectly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic through the Sure Community Foundation.”
Cyrille Joffre, chief operating officer at Sure, added: “Working and schooling from home has resulted in a significant increase in network traffic as well as fixed line and mobile voice calls. Our long-term investment in our networks has allowed us to absorb the increase in demand, and will continue to. This traffic is monitored 24/7 by our Service Operations Centre’s team members working from home.
“I feel proud to work with such great colleagues working tirelessly to maintain critical telecom infrastructure across the communities we serve.”
Details of the new connectivity measures can be found on the Sure website.
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