No saturation but a hell of an overheat. "The telecom networks have held up to the shock of traffic spikes in this unprecedented period and we can be proud of it," said the French Telecom Federation. Fixed Internet networks suffered an explosion in consumption during the two months of confinement, which ended up being quantified.
Solicited by an unprecedented consultation of digital entertainment, broadband Internet traffic increased radically in March (+ 34%) and in April (+ 29%), compared to the same period last year, according to the American specialist protection of NETSCOUT networks.
Its experts have compiled data from their customers, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), in order to assess the impact of confinement on French households.
Slight decline as approaching deconfinement
Consumption on fixed networks jumped from the first hours of containment with + 20% as of March 17, compared to the same data of 2019. It then worsened like never, with an average of + 30% over the period pure and hard confinement from mid-March to the end of April.
"It increased in April but there is a slight decrease towards the Easter weekend, observed all over the world and in France, which could be linked to a fed up of containment and a need for escape and get away from the screens, ”analyzes Philippe Alcoy, security specialist at NETSCOUT.
ISPs have recorded a fairly logical increase in connections to Content Delivery Networks (RDC), that is to say bandwidth-hungry video content providers, singled out at the start of containment.
In figures that are striking, this gives a 63% increase in traffic for the month of March and + 86% of traffic to the DRC like Netflix and others in April.
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"Most of the additional traffic is linked to video streaming and online video games because the data shows a decrease in the amount of flow to the professional platforms of companies linked to telework," says Philippe Alcoy.
The heyday of social media
Windows to the outside world during containment, social media also overheated traffic. Free, Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom observed a massive increase in February, with an increase of 55% compared to the previous year. This exceptional growth reached 121% in March, peaking at 155% in April.
However, there has not been a French exception. These same trends are found, with a few percentages, in other countries which have undergone a form of confinement such as our European neighbors or the United States.
