Sure has seen a 45% increase in home broadband traffic since lockdown was announced a month ago, with lots of office workers continuing to work from home.
It has gone up significantly from an average household usage of 51GB per week to 74GB.
The community has also been staying in touch regularly over the phone, with calls from mobile phones having doubled over the past few weeks.
More than 1,000 Sure customers have applied for their free upgrade from basic to standard home broadband, doubling customer speed from an average of 16Mbps to 34Mbps. The telecoms provider will keep the upgrade free of charge until the end of June.
However, despite the increase in demand, Sure's network has remained stable and continues to have spare capacity.
Pictured: Sure's usage has risen significantly.
Before lockdown, peak hours for home broadband were between 17:00 and 23:00 as people returned from work and school. But, the company's network usage data shows that the hours of high traffic volume have now spread out across the day, from 10:00 until 23:00.
According to the data, the demand for home broadband has also increased in the evening as people stay in touch with their loved ones virtually and use TV streaming services.
"We're proud that Sure's infrastructure has been able to easily absorb this increase in traffic and continues to help keep the community connected with the huge shift to working and studying from home," said Sure's Chief Executive, Justin Bellinger.
“As the Bailiwick’s telecoms provider, we have introduced a number of measures to ensure that we can help support the community and stay resilient, such as launching a home delivery service and a range of home schooling packages, doubling the number of advisors on our webchat customer support and increasing the support for those directly and indirectly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic through the Sure Community Foundation.”
Cyrille Joffre, Chief Operating Officer at Sure, added: “Working and schooling from home has resulted in a significant increase in network traffic as well as fixed line and mobile voice calls. As the Bailiwicks’ broadband provider, our long term investment in our networks has allowed up to absorb the increase in demand, and will continue to. This traffic is monitored 24/7 by our Service Operations Centre’s team members working from home.
“I feel proud to work with such great colleagues working tirelessly to maintain critical telecom infrastructure across the communities we serve.”
Pictured top: Sure's High Street shop.
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