People using Netflix to watch programmes and movies on demand are driving up data use over broadband – by an average of 50 percent across the country in just a year.
The latest figures from Chorus, which runs copper and fibre networks nationwide, and is a Founding Supporter of this news site, show substantial increases in data use when comparing this April to the same month last year.
The biggest increases were in Porirua, near Wellington, where monthly data use for the average household rose 92 percent on the Chorus network – from 97 gigabytes to186, South Taranaki, (up 77 percent), Stratford (up 71 percent), Gisborne and Kapiti (up 66 percent).
But the biggest users of data in total were in the former Manukau City in South Auckland, where households consumed a monthly average of 225 GB, up from 150 last year, and then North Shore, Waikatere, Papakura and the old Auckland City area. On average, households now use 150 GB of data a month, up from 30 GB a month in 2011.
The Chorus figures do not include wireless broadband services, or fibre broadband data use for the 12 cities or districts around the country where the Ultra Fast Broadband programme is being undertaken by other companies.
But Chorus’s network strategy manager, Kurt Rodgers, says the figures for its nationwide copper network and 60 or so areas covered by its fibre show a clear trend of rapidly growing data use.
“Netflix has been the driver in the past year. Who knows what it will be [that drives use up] next year or the year after that? There will be new things that will come along.”
A combination of the popular Netflix video-on-demand service, 4K ultra hi-definition televisions, homes with growing numbers of devices and everything from Spotify music streaming to webcam security cameras were pushing the surge in data use.
“One hour of a TV show uses about 3 GB of data. You do the numbers. If you watch one hour of TV a night every night of the month … And then a 4K TV uses about 7 GB an hour.”
He said many schools required pupils to do homework online, often involving downloading, editing and uploading video.
The high data totals in the Manukau area could be down to higher ratios of Māori and Pasifika populations. “One thing research shows is Māori and Pasifika are much bigger users of social media and adopters of digital technology. The households’ size is slightly larger and the average age is much much lower.”
High use in wider Auckland could be put down, in part, to its diverse population. Ex-pat communities have all the more reason to connect with their home culture. The city also had substantial areas with young, digitally active populations.
New Zealand’s UFB rollout is a nine-year programme and is about two-thirds complete. Figures from the March quarter broadband update issued by Communications Minister Simon Bridges show more than a third of New Zealanders who have access to UFB are now connected. There were about 40,000 new connections in the first three months of the year.
With 1.1 million households and businesses having access, the Government claims to be around 200,000 ahead of plan.
*Chorus is one of Newsroom‘s Foundation Supporters. It offered the figures for this story, and an interview with Kurt Rodgers. The data increases were judged by Newsroom to be of public interest and treated as a standard news story.
