Telco network usage patterns during COVID19
Sebastian Barros
Regional Head of Enterprise Wireless Solutions | Ex-Google | Founder | Author | Doctorate Candidate
During the last week, AT&T and Verizon released their first quarter report in 2020, giving a clearer picture on how COVID-19 is settling in after 3 months.
Verizon
Verizon has expressed their confidence that wireless network usage since the start of the crisis, has now stabilized and it is not affecting the network quality of service. The graph below shows their current network usage patterns:
Verizon has experienced a 9% increase in wireless data use as compared to non-COVID19 baseline. Most users have been shifting their heavy data usage of their residential fixed network, reducing the pressure on their wireless network. There has also been a change in the traffic pattern with a sharp increase in certain application usage, including gaming (+213%), Video (+41%) and Collaboration tools (+982%).
Voice has also shown a strong increment with a 38% increase in voice over LTE minutes of use, a 45% increase in VoLTE call times, and a 65% increase in virtual private network usa7ge.
AT&T
During its Q1 earnings conference call, AT&T executives outlined the impact of the coronavirus pandemic in their network. Verizon saw a strong increase if their core network traffic and also the usage of wireless and fixed voice minutes.
The 76% increase of Wi-Fi calling minutes is driven by users avoiding to use their wireless plan minutes.
Both companies released a below's expectation financial quarter, driven by lower sales. The impact of closed retail stores, lower device sales and a higher operations cost are putting major pressure on their financial results.
Account Executive at Full Throttle Falato Leads - We can safely send over 20,000 emails and 9,000 LinkedIn Inmails per month for lead generation
8 个月Sebastian, thanks for sharing! How are you?
Director of Software Engineering – Software Services at Juniper Networks
4 年Very insightful info. people using more wi-fi to save LTE plan minutes is understandable, but what explains significant drop in VPN in recent weeks ? Thanks
Digital Transformation | Project & Program Management | Service Delivery | Business Analysis | Customer Experience Management
4 年Nice insight Sebastian Barros. Thanks for sharing...
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4 年Good Analysis! My key takeaways are a) Telcos should focus on collaboration tools viz new products, QoS, improve market penetration b) Increase in capacity, as the economy starts revving and remote working continues to sustain, Telcos should invest increasing the size of the pipe c) Telcos who have both broadcast and streaming options should start investing more on the latter and drive analytics d) WiFi is relatively under-invested. Telcos should focus on value-adds like security, connectivity management, bandwidth allocation etc