As expected, traffic on Comcast’s network has soared during the coronavirus lockdowns, but one of New Jersey’s largest internet providers says not to worry about speed, reliability or Netflix crashing ... the real doomsday scenario.
“First and foremost, it’s important to know that the network is performing well," Tony Werner, Comcast’s president of Technology, Product and Xperience, said on a conference call with reporters Monday. "Customers are able to do what they need to do with a great deal of proficiency. Usage is on the rise, but it’s all been within the capability of the network.”
Nationally, Comcast saw a 32% percent increase in usage since March 1 and certain tech hot spots in San Francisco and Seattle have reached as high as 60%. Across the board, internet usage has surged as customers have relied on Comcast’s network for everything from video conferencing to entertainment.
Some of the numbers exemplify how much Americans have relied on internet usage while stuck at home:
- Work at home and at-home education has boosted video and voice conferencing to a 212% increase.
- There’s been a 38% increase in streaming and web video consumption.
- Gaming downloads are up 50% and upwards of 80% when popular games are released.
- As for Comcast’s television numbers, linear video consumption increased four hours to 64 hours a week and some days, customers have logged more than 50 million queries on their Voice Remote, up from 30 million on average before coronavirus.
To stay ahead of the usage increases, Werner said engineers add capacity 12 to 18 months in advance. Comcast runs 700,000 speed test across the country daily and results have been promising. Slowdowns and performance issues arise when usage reaches 98 or 99% percent of the network’s capacity, but Werner said very few customers would ever be affected.
“We can still have accidents, power outages, equipment issues, but our performance on network availability has been the best in our company’s history," Werner said. “Other than rare exceptions, any idea that your kid shouldn’t be playing video games while you’re on a Zoom conference call should not be the case.”
Another coronavirus trend that Comcast reported was a shift from when internet usage used to peak. Those peaks would normally occur at 9 p.m. but have moved up to 7 or 8 p.m. in most cities.
Werner said that trend may be evidence that Americans have eliminated commutes and are not socializing after work because the peaks don’t last any longer — they’re just happening earlier.
According to a report from Speedtest.net in December, New Jersey has the fastest internet download speeds in the country, at 124.45 Mbps (megabits per second), which is 139.8 percent faster than the slowest state in the country, Maine.
Usage increases for New Jersey were not provided by Comcast.
Pat Lanni may be reached by e-mail at planni@njadvancemedia.com. Find NJ.com on Facebook for more coverage.