Which Australian state/territory appears to have downloaded the most data per household in 2020? The answer may surprise you.
On Telstra's fixed line network, the title went to households in the Northern Territory. Here's how all the states and territories ranked, in monthly usage per household in gigabytes.
- NT: 327.98
- VIC: 316.17
- QLD: 316.19
- NSW: 283.56
- ACT: 283.56
- SA: 283.09
- WA: 282.71
- TAS: 276.12
Just as some sort of comparison, average monthly data consumption across Australia on the NBN network for the year to December 2019 was 258GB.
The following were the most data-hungry suburbs in Australia in 2020 according Telstra. The download figures were provided as being in gigabytes "over the course of the year". The figures don't really make sense given the monthly gigabyte usage per household figures mentioned above; so some clarification is needed - i.e., whether they refer to monthly averages. Anyway, here are the rankings:
- VIC - Williams Landing - 567.70
- NSW - Edmondson Park - 546.79
- NSW - Shortland - 541.68
- SA - Huntfield Heights - 524.30
- VIC - Oakleigh South - 519.24
- QLD - Upper Coomera - 519.09
- VIC - Wyndham Vale - 515.37
- VIC - Aintree - 513.93
- NSW - Hoxton Park - 503.60
- SA - Windsor Gardens - 502.65
Telstra says daytime peak traffic on its fixed network has increased by as much as 70 percent compared to early March, but is still significantly less than its typical evening peak traffic, which jumped by as much as 22 percent.
Key contributors to the biggest download events over the year were related to gaming - mentioned exclusively for nine out of ten events and featuring in the remaining event. The games identified were Call Of Duty and Fortnite.
As games become more complex, their download size is increasing - and game development companies are increasingly turning to subscription models. This means Australian gamers need a good ISP capable of delivering fast and reliable speeds, low latency and of course offering unlimited data.
As for mobile calls, those also grew year over year and Telstra notes a peak for SMS (50 Million) and voice calls (61 Million) in late March when Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced COVID-19 related restrictions and new measures.
New Year's Eve is nearly upon us and Telstra is ready for the event. While it expects voice calls to remain pretty much in line with last year (61 million), it's predicting a huge jump in messaging – a total of around 80 million. The company also expects an increase in data usage on New Year's Eve - 4.75 petabytes compared with 3.6 last year. 4.75 petabytes is 4,750,000 gigabytes.
