“We’ve been analysing the data since we all went into lockdown, and we’ve seen some pretty interesting results,” said Aussie Broadband managing director Phillip Britt.

“Normally our routine per user growth is around 2% in a month, so this is quite a significant increase. Basically, we’ve seen data demand increase from by around 100 Gbps during evening peak, compared to figures calculated at the start of March.

“Whether you’re working from home, ordering take away or just streaming a lot of Netflix, there’s no denying that the internet is now critical to most households.

According to Britt, the company started to notice a change in Internet consumption on Friday 20 March, and he believed this is when working from home really started to kick in.

“After the first week of lockdown, there was also a spike of broadban d usage on Friday 27 and Saturday 28 March, during evening hours,” Britt said.

“We do expect evening peaks to increase further, possibly up to 40% going on international data. Given we already have a customer base skewed towards heavy streaming, we believe we’re reasonably well set-up to deal with increased evening load, and we’ve implemented the extra CVC (connectivity virtual circuit) provided by NBN in preparation.”