UK broadband use up more than 10% in record-breaking 2024

Broadband use across the UK increased by 10.5 per cent last year, according to Openreach.

According to Openreach’s much-anticipated annual update, broadband traffic across the UK increased by 10.5% in 2024 to 103,590 Petabytes[1] (PB) of data.

A closer look at the numbers reveals that peaks coincided with specific online events, such as Amazon Prime’s Premier League coverage, the release of popular gaming title downloads like Fortnite, the setup of new gaming consoles, and millions going online for Black Friday.

There was a real surge in broadband use towards the end of 2024, with December being the busiest month of the year for broadband traffic, and Sunday 1 December the busiest day.

It’s the most comprehensive data available from the company that builds and maintains the fibre network used by customers of more than 300 service providers selling fibre – including BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone, and Zen.

Earlier this week, it was announced that demand for Openreach's Full Fibre network is surging, with orders increasing by 26 per cent in the last year – around 68k orders every week.

The network now also reaches more than half of homes and businesses in the UK – that’s around 17 million premises with access to this game-changing technology.

Clive Selley, CEO, Openreach, said: “Fast, reliable connectivity is essential for the UK, and the increased traffic on our broadband network is evidence that customers are increasingly reliant on it in their daily lives.

“While over a third of properties have already switched, there’s plenty of room for more people to get a better connection right now. So why not check if you could get faster – and potentially cheaper – broadband today.”

Openreach continues to lead the way, building its Full Fibre network faster and further than any other UK provider reaching 78k new premises every week – or the equivalent of a city the size of Peterborough, in Cambridgeshire.

Full Fibre allows households to use multiple devices at once with less buffering or drops in performance – check here to see if you can already get Full Fibre.

Key findings for the UK’s broadband use during 2024 include: 

• The busiest day across the Openreach network was Sunday, December 1st, when 405 Pb of data was consumed. This was unusually high due to a surge in online spending as people sought ‘Black Friday’ bargains, and people downloaded the latest content update for popular online multi-player game Fortnite.
• The 2^nd busiest day was Thursday 26^th December, which was due to new gaming consoles being used, and 8 Premier league games being streamed on Amazon Prime. More than 367 Pb of data was consumed across the Openreach network.
• The next busiest day was Sunday November 24th, when 355 Pb of data was consumed.
• The busiest months in 2024 were December at a usage of 9,707 Pb, an 8.5% rise on December 2023 and November at 8,953 Pb – an 8% increase on November 2023.
• The busiest day of the week is typically a Sunday.
• The busiest time on the network is usually between 8pm and 10pm
• The busiest hour during the festive period was between 20:00 and 21:00 on the 26^th December.

Live football (Amazon Prime) and online gaming continue to have the greatest impact on UK’s broadband consumption.

This is the most comprehensive data available from Openreach, which builds and maintains the fibre network used by customers from hundreds of broadband providers, including BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone, and Zen. 

[1] One Petabyte equals one million Gigabytes and on average a 4K quality movie stream uses about 7.2 Giga Bytes per hour.