Average Openreach Fibre User Consumes 190GB A Month

BT has shared some usage statistics about the Openreach superfast broadband network, revealing that the average fibre consumes 190GB a month.

There are five million active users on the network, which is available to 24 million premises in the UK, with data use increasing 40 percent year-on-year. BT also said 25 percent of properties account for 75 percent of all data consumption.

Broadband use

The figures were released in the company’s first ever ‘Fibre Broadband Index’, which will be published quarterly. However precious few other details were disclosed by BT, which admitted the summer was the least busy period for network activity.

“Over half of UK households have at least two different internet enabled devices and nearly a third has seven or more, all usually connected at the same time,” said Ian Lawrence, chief engineer at Openreach. “And now with the rapid growth of Smart TVs all needing a fast broadband connection, what we can see is that consumers and businesses will demand even more from fibre.”

BT recently announced plans to increase minimum speeds to 10Mbps, extend superfast coverage to places not covered by the government’s existing 95 percent target by 2017, and to bring ‘ultrafast speeds’ to the majority of the UK population within a decade. It has also promised to improve service standards for its Openreach customers.

However, it says all these pledges depend on the outcome of Ofcom’s review. It has called for stable regulatory environment and one that promotes investment. Naturally, it opposes any breakup of BT and Openreach, claiming the current arrangement allows the unit to access BT’s R&D and capital.

Critics, such as Sky, TalkTalk and Vodafone, claim the current structure hands BT an unfair advantage and stifles investment, accusations BT denies. They want BT to become an independent company working on behalf of all communications providers.

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