For the week from Monday, 29 June to Sunday, 5 June, peak download throughput on the NBN’s main wholesale access service — the measure of data flowing through the NBN network — during the busy evening period increased by 24% to 13.7Terabits per second (Tbps), compared to the last week of February, which NBN measures as its normal pre-COVID-19 baseline.

NBN Co reports that peak download throughput during the week beginning Monday, 29 June also increased during daytime business hours, up 21% to 9.4Tbps, and early evening hours up 30% to 12.8Tbps.

According to NBN Co, following several months streaming at lower bitrates, major streaming video services have started returning to their pre-COVID-19 streaming bitrates, which the company says “may have contributed to an increase in data demand during the week”.

The figures have been released as part of Australian Broadband Data Demand, a weekly report into the peak throughput recorded in a week during daytime business hours, early evening hours and busy evening hours.

The report also shows that peak upload throughput on the main NBN wholesale service in the evening busy hours for the week beginning 29 June increased by 22% to 0.94Tbps, compared to the pre-COVID-19 baseline – and in the early evening hours, peak upload throughput increased 28% to 0.87Tbps; and peak throughput during daytime business hours increased by 58% to 0.79Tbps.

“Compared to the pre-COVID-19 baseline before social distancing measures were implemented, downstream network usage on the NBN main wholesale service during business hours on 3 July 2020 was 53% higher than pre-COVID-19," the NBN Co said.

And upstream network usage on the NBN main wholesale service during business hours on 3 July was 69% higher than the pre-COVID-19 baseline.

As iTWire reported in April, the COVID-19 crisis has pushed up NBN data demand as online work grows, with home more people in home isolation.