Usage Rocketing, Home Broadband Weathers Pandemic-Induced Demand -- for Now

The massive shift of workers and students to their homes due to COVID-19 is gobbling up data transmission availability and challenging employers with their networks optimized for an in-office workforce, network and data experts said in interviews last week. Employers are rapidly ramping up the number of VPN licenses. The issue isn’t expected to reach the point where carriers have to plow additional investments into their networks.

Data usage is rocketing due to increased video streaming and gaming, said OpenVault CEO Mark Trudeau: Daytime data usage two weeks ago rose 48% from January, up nearly 25% from the previous week, and evening data usage gained 25% and 8% respectively. Every operator network has pockets that are increasingly congested, and getting more so, Trudeau said, but most "have some headroom" for more peak growth. He said there's concern about growing usage during business hours, but that doesn't put it close to data usage during peak hours. “I just don't know” where it plateaus, Trudeau said.

Tyler Cooper, BroadbandNow consumer policy expert, agreed major networks aren't at the point of needing sizable investment to ratchet up capacity quickly. He said demand will likely stabilize, though it could increase at peak if more schools close and more workplaces go remote. The data aggregation firm said speed tests in the 10 largest metropolitan areas the week of March 9 found six showed little to no change in median speed compared with the preceding 11 weeks. Houston, New York, San Diego and San Jose had degradations and one had a speed increase. Cooper said if virus infection rates grow in other cities, network strain could mount and be exacerbated by the difficulty of scheduling regular maintenance and upgrades.

Analysts don't foresee big problems. In a note to investors, New Street Research's Jonathan Chaplin said wireless carriers expect wireless traffic to fall as subscribers spend more time at home, connected via Wi-Fi. He said cable and wireline companies might face network congestion from increased fixed broadband use, perhaps needing to add capacity on highly penetrated nodes. S&P's Craig Matsumoto said core networks should be able to handle the increased daytime usage, with any trouble spots "at the edges."

"Can our networks handle" the growing online traffic? FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel tweeted Thursday. She said network outage reporting for voice service is mandatory, but the agency needs a disaster information reporting system "for #coronavirus and the broadband age." Several companies lent spectrum to carriers. Commissioner Mike O'Rielly tweeted Friday that the "amazing stories" of wireless using others' licensed spectrum to expand capacity and maintain speeds is a "great reminder to reject notion that carriers are awash with spectrum. We must develop the next bands for pipeline."

The FCC said Friday its Wireless Bureau approved an AT&T request to use Dish Network AWS-4 spectrum and AT&T and Verizon requests to use agency-inventoried AWS-3 spectrum to meet wireless broadband demand during the pandemic. Chairman Ajit Pai said in talks with network operators, "we have been encouraged by the feedback we have received so far both regarding the ability of their networks to handle changes in usage patterns caused by the coronavirus outbreak and how networks are performing so far."

ISP Reports

ISPs are adjusting to rapid increases in demand for network capacity.

MidCo has a 20% buffer above what's needed for the peak usage it experiences 8-10 p.m., Chief Technology Officer Jon Pederson told us. He said even with the increased demand for broadband during the day from teleworkers videoconferencing and kids streaming, the daytime use has been below typical evening peaks. "It certainly helps to have a little more network capacity than you need going forward," Pederson said. He addressed customer concerns over network capacity in an online video. MidCo is working with public officials on how to extend broadband access to schoolchildren who need it for online classes. The CTO acknowledged a possible uptick in new subscriber installations, and MidCo will have a self-install option to help meet demand. When installers must visit a home, they will make sure there are no signs of coronavirus infections before arriving, Pederson said.

Arvig saw a 25% spike in peak traffic over the past week, 50% in the past month, said Director-IP Strategy and Engineering Ben Wiechman. The company plans incremental upgrades, especially in rural markets, and the networks are holding up, he said. As a best practice, the company closely monitors its network for congestion and continues to work through contingency plans. "We have staff distributed across the state" that can be moved as needed, he said. The Department of Homeland Security has classified IT personnel as critical, he noted. Demand for new residential broadband connections also increased after communities began social isolation.

Frontier Communications is "monitoring its network in real time," a spokesperson emailed. "The network continues to perform well with a slight uptick in bandwidth consumption at certain times. Anticipating increased use of connectivity for telework, distance learning and staying in touch with friends and family, Frontier is prepared for increased capacity to communities and customers, where network infrastructure allows.” CenturyLink Chief Technology Officer Andrew Dugan blogged about what happens to a residential network when so many subscribers are home. "We’re being tested," Dugan wrote. The telco didn't comment further.

"Engineers are confident in the network capacity," NCTA blogged. The association said that if users see a slowdown, home network management issues might be at play.

Western ISPs

Until northeast Montana schools fully implement distance learning, it’s hard to estimate the amount of additional traffic, emailed Mike Kilgore, Nemont Telephone CEO. He said its network "is ready to serve as the majority of the locations with school-aged children have access to broadband and we have plenty of capacity." An issue is pricing, he said. While applauding FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's "keep everyone connected" pledge (see 2003130066), Kilgore is "left wondering why we cannot act with such purpose and urgency when it comes to our universal service programs."

Utah's Strata Networks emailed that it's "seeing a slight increase in bandwidth consumption during daytime hours (which is to be expected with kids at home and employees working from home)." It has no plans to reconfigure its network. It's pushing 4G LTE fixed wireless to keep costs down. AT&T, Verizon and Charter Communications didn't comment Friday.

Utopia Fiber CEO Roger Timmerman in a webcast Friday said the company has had a noticeable decrease in enterprise customer data consumption, while residential broadband consumption is up sizably during the day. He said residential evening peak traffic is 10-15% higher than pre-pandemic. He said mobile backhaul volume is down as cell network traffic seems lessened, as is school data traffic. Timmerman said fibered rural areas aren’t having capacity issues, but many rural areas lack fiber and “are at a huge disadvantage.”

Sonic CEO Dane Jasper said its network usage before California's shelter-in-place order shows a substantial increase in daytime data consumption but is well below what used to be evening peak hours. He said Sonic's fiber-to-the-home network hasn't had congestion, but upgrades that were planned for six months to a year from now are being accelerated and some will be done in the next week. Sonic's upstream peak used to be at the same time as its evening downstream peak, and now the peak for outbound is during the day due to videoconferencing and distance learning, Jasper said.

That network infrastructure can handle all the additional data demands of the home-bound doesn't help those "with great broadband but poor Wi-Fi performance," Irdeto Product Manager Ronald Peters blogged Friday. Broadband providers need to start thinking about future home broadband needs as subscribers get more discerning about service issues beyond just speed, like networks that cover every corner of the home, automatically stop malware or switch channels or adjust settings, he said.

VPN Woes

Work-at-home end users are feeling network crunches particularly due to increased use of VPNs connecting to an employer's or school's wide-area network. Each person logged into a VPN "ties up a dedicated path and really chews into last-mile bandwidth," emailed CCG Consulting President Doug Dawson. He said usage will keep climbing as more people work remotely: "Many companies are just starting to figure out how to give access to outsiders."

For employers with more people working remotely, one of the first challenges is ramping up the number of VPN licenses and the capacity needed to support that heavier traffic, said Bob Noel, vice president-strategic partnerships and marketing for network management software firm Plixer. He said the speed of phishing attacks on Plixer customers is ramping up because more people working from home is “a ripe opportunity for bad actors.” Those additional VPNs can put extra burden on networks as employees’ non-work activities also often end up flowing across the company’s network, he said.

Virginia Information Technologies Agency Chief Administrative Officer Dan Wolf said that, like the rest of the nation, the commonwealth is facing an "unprecedented challenge" of converting its on-site workforce to a remote one "in an artificially short period." He said one of the biggest challenges has been cybersecurity as Virginia and its suppliers have seen an increase in malicious activity such as phishing. He said Virginia has been working with suppliers to get additional laptops and mobile devices deployed to state workers who need them. It's facing a VPN crunch since it doesn't have capacity for all employees who need one at some point for their jobs, he said. Meantime, it tells state workers to limit VPN use to where actual access is required to avoid people not having access. On the upside, he said, the state is "in a much better place than if this had happened two years ago" when it relied on an on-premises exchange-based email system.

Ripple effects aren't expected to revert to normal after the crisis passes. Openvault's Trudeau said data consumption should come back down as people return to their workplaces and schools but not to the point they were a couple of months ago. He said if the outbreak accelerates cord cutting, that could have "a massive impact on usage" because cord cutters use twice as much data as traditional double- and triple-play telecom subscribers.

Plixer's Noel said more remote access will likely be here to stay, and major carriers will have to beef up their infrastructure to handle that. Virginia's Wolfe said the pandemic has caused state organizations to look at their approach to remote work "and how we should approach things going forward."