What our data consumption says about us

We’re creatures of habit us Kiwis, when it comes to what we’re doing online anyway.

Data usage on the Chorus network tells an interesting story.

In an average day data usage on the Chorus network is at its lowest at 5am and begins to rise between 6am and 8:30am as we wake up and reach for our devices. It stays pretty consistent during the day and jumps sharply from 3:30pm. It’s unlikely to be a coincidence that it’s the same time certain data-hungry members of the family wander in from school. We slow down again over dinner time, and from 7:30pm we climb to our highest usage period of the day - between 8pm and 10:30pm - as we get through one or two Netflix shows, upload the homework or plan our next tropical holiday. Daily usage is higher in the weekends and we’re online slightly less at night on weekends too. But if you look at the numbers we’re generally following the same routine every day.

Like our routine, our online patterns change during the summer holidays. A lot of us may have been doing some last minute Christmas shopping on 14 December at 9:30pm as that was the busiest 15 minute period on our network during 2016. Average consumption dropped 30% on Christmas Day and over 40% on New Years’ Eve, so we must have been putting down our devices and tearing ourselves away from our favourite shows and getting together with friends and family as is traditional during the festive period. Data consumption in our Auckland Central exchange dropped by 25% over the Christmas/New Year break. However, it’s likely Aucklanders weren’t giving their binge watching up, just relocating it, as we saw data use in the Coromandel increase by 44% over the same period.

Here at Chorus our analysts collect and interpret national and regional data consumption figures to help us plan for and manage traffic flow through our network in the future. We need to do that to make sure our national network has the capacity to get your favourite Netflix show to you; whether you’re watching it on your couch at home, or from your favourite holiday spot.

Interesting trends aside, what these numbers are overwhelmingly telling us is that as a nation our average data use is growing fast. As a country we chewed through 1.5 exabytes (or 1,500,000,000 gigabytes) of data last year. That’s a lot of information, emails, movies, music, and more being bundled and carried all over the country!