As the NBN roll-out marches foward, more and more Australian homes and businesses are upgrading to the National Broadband Network. Priding itself on being faster and more reliable, the NBN is accessible to every one in two Australian households, and connecting to it is as easy as 1,2,3.

The NBN Co measures and analyses daily traffic usage so they can help improve the network, and meet the demans of the millions of people and premises who have signed up to the network. The NBN's website cites that their analysis of these data reports on usage patterns informs their future choices on access technologies and upgrades...

"In April we conducted a large piece of research, looking at the entirety of the 3.7 million active services we had on the network at the time, to better understand how bandwidth is being demanded by end users, when it is being used and how much data is being consumed."

The aim of this analysis was to determine how they can best give their customers what they want. So - what do the customers want? How are Australians currently using the NBN? 

HOME ENTERTAINMENT 

Not surprisingy, most Australians are using the NBN to watch their stories. A better means to view home entertainment seems to be one of the biggest draws of the NBN, with most Aussie NBN users using using their bandwidth to accomodate their net browsing habits, VPN usage, and ample live streaming. 

Interestingly, a recent NBN progress report that with the exception of Fixed Wireless and Satelite access networks (which are subject to capacity constraints), end users on HFC/FTTN/FTTP networks all had very similar usage demands, particularly on higher speed plans.

 
DOWNLOADS

According to the NBN Co's further reports, another interesting find was that across the total 3.7 million end-user premises on NBN, median data consumption came in at 108GB, while average consumption was 190GB for the month. 

UPLOADS

 The NBN's research also showed that while the median upload came in at just less than 7GB a month, the average rocketed to 17.45GB, with 1 percent of end-user premises taking further advantage of their connections... 

"Just as a small percentage of end-user premises were responsible for the bulk of downloads, a minority of end users (just six per cent) were responsible for 50 per cent of uploads for April, with the largest uploader of the month sending more than 14TB out from their premises."


PLANS FOR THE FUTURE


 
NBN Co have cited that they they prepping themselves for future increases in connections by developing new technoligies, such as cell splitting and adding new frequencies in the Fixed Wireless footprint, lighting up spare ports and fibres in the FTTP footprint, and helping to sort out end-user in home wiring issues which they know to have a sizable impact on speeds.  

"Like anything in life, we know that expecting the unexpected is the norm; surprises will always come around the corner. But we also know we are doing all we can to ensure we meet these challenges, that resilience and wholesale capacity is built into the network and that we are working hard to help service providers and end users enjoy great service. Having now reached the four millionth connection we are well on our path to a fully connected nation by 2020."

So there you have it! If you'd like to find out what the best NBN plan for you is, click here and let Compare Broadband do the hard work for you!