Three Ireland sees year on year data usage increase by nearly half (46%) over the Christmas period

Three Ireland’s customers were keen to connect over Christmas, with a huge 11,700 terabytes (11,700,000 Gigabytes) of data passing through the network over the festive period, that’s more than 54 terabytes per hour and the equivalent of either:

— 36 million images uploaded to Instagram every hour
— 270 million WhatsApp messages every hour
— 54 thousand hours of Netflix streamed every hour

Data usage this Christmas saw a 46% increase on the same period in 2018, with daily traffic growth up 30% and hourly traffic growth was +43%. The busiest day for our customers to connect was 26th December, with between 9pm and 10pm on average the busiest hour every day. Around 60% of the traffic usage was from video streaming, with 15% of usage attributed to messaging over the network.

Interestingly for the second year running, the busiest hour for data usage for Three customers over the whole festive period was between 9-10pm on January 1st, which coincided with the Arsenal v Manchester United premiership game. Three also saw a 40% spike in Netflix usage during this time, with customers enjoying the last few hours before many return to work in the new year.

Elaine Carey, Chief Commercial Officer at Three commented: “At Three, we understand the power of connection in creating and sharing special moments with loved ones near and far, especially at Christmas. We’re delighted to see that our customers are making the most of Three’s unlimited All You Can Eat Data to capture and share every moment over the festive season, as well as catching up on their favourite movies and TV series.”