nbn co CTO addresses Broadband World Forum

The Chief Technology Officer at nbn co has delivered a keynote speech at the Broadband World Forum in Berlin.

Ray Owen’s address revealed that data consumption on the nbn broadband access network has risen more than seven-fold in the 2012–2018 period to reach an average of 213 GB/month per end-user premises.

Owen told the global conference audience that with 4.4 million premises now activated, the nbn broadband access network is carrying around 30 petabytes of data every day — the equivalent of about 15 trillion pages of printed text.

The top 14% of end users are consuming half of all data on the network and the top 1% of end-user premises on the nbn broadband access network each consume around one terabyte per month.

The heaviest single end-user premises on the nbn network is using around 20 TB per month — enough to download 5000 high-definition, feature-length movies.

Around 50% of peak-time usage on the nbn network is real-time entertainment — typically video streaming — with around 30% of peak-time usage coming from web-browsing with the remainder coming from VPN usage and file-sharing.

“We are seeing real surges in demand on the nbn network at around 3 pm to 4 pm when children come home from school and again in the evening between 8 pm to 9 pm when people are relaxing and starting to stream videos,” said Owen.

“Whilst our current network is coping well despite the rapidly increasing usage, we are already working towards making sure the network will be able to meet the demands of the future as well.

“We have already deployed DOCSIS 3.1 on our HFC network to help provide greater capacity and are working towards enabling G.Fast capability on our fibre-to-the-curb network as well.”

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/BillionPhotos.com

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