As Liverpool battled it out with Real Madrid in the Champions League final in Paris, across the English Channel mobile operator Three UK experienced a record-breaking night with a new all-time data peak.
The company’s 5G network, recently rated the UK’s biggest and fastest, saw data peak at 1068 Gbps between 21:00 and 21:15 on Saturday evening as record numbers connected to watch the games between the two giants of European football with 20 Champions Leagues/European Cups between them.
Data from Three UK’s Mobile Britain 2022 report, released in March 2022, showed that 81% of monthly peaks in the last two years were driven by football matches. However, none achieved as high a peak as the 1068 Gbps the network carried during the Champions League Final.
The following day brought another record for Three UK as the network reached its highest daily volume of all time. In total, 7408Tb of data was consumed on the network throughout Sunday, driven by an uplift in Netflix usage on the network. Traffic on the streaming service peaked 24% above the previous week, coinciding with the release of the fourth season of Stranger Things.
The surge was consistent from other findings in the Mobile Britain 2022 study which observed that Sunday had become the most popular day for users to stream their favourite TV shows and films. Sundays have been the peak usage day for four of the first eight weeks of 2022, having grown in popularity in each of the last five years. A third of people say they are now more likely to watch TV or a film on a Sunday than they were five years ago.
Commenting on the data surges, David Hennessy, chief technology officer at Three UK, said: “Whether it’s enjoying live sport, or bingeing the latest much-watch series, our customers are streaming more than ever. Last weekend saw record-breaking levels of data consumed on our network. We can expect more data peaks in the months ahead.”
Data from Three UK’s Mobile Britain 2022 report, released in March 2022, showed that 81% of monthly peaks in the last two years were driven by football matches. However, none achieved as high a peak as the 1068 Gbps the network carried during the Champions League Final.
The following day brought another record for Three UK as the network reached its highest daily volume of all time. In total, 7408Tb of data was consumed on the network throughout Sunday, driven by an uplift in Netflix usage on the network. Traffic on the streaming service peaked 24% above the previous week, coinciding with the release of the fourth season of Stranger Things.
The surge was consistent from other findings in the Mobile Britain 2022 study which observed that Sunday had become the most popular day for users to stream their favourite TV shows and films. Sundays have been the peak usage day for four of the first eight weeks of 2022, having grown in popularity in each of the last five years. A third of people say they are now more likely to watch TV or a film on a Sunday than they were five years ago.
Commenting on the data surges, David Hennessy, chief technology officer at Three UK, said: “Whether it’s enjoying live sport, or bingeing the latest much-watch series, our customers are streaming more than ever. Last weekend saw record-breaking levels of data consumed on our network. We can expect more data peaks in the months ahead.”
