FEATURE
NORDIC CAPACITY OUTLOOK
T
he Covid-19 has radically changed the data traffic profile in the Nordics. During mid-March most Nordic countries required private, businesses and governments employees to work remotely from home. Schools shutdown and students were sent home to follow remote learning programs. This created an overnight need for increased data capacity and the industry responded to the challenge. In Norway Telenor is the largest carrier with 80 per cent of all telecommunication data traffic. During April, fixed mobile traffic increased by 43% during business hours. Mobile data was up 20% with a peak during evening/night. Video meetings was up 350% and for fixed broadband the traffic was up 40% during business hours (which is normally 08-16 in Norway!) SMS messaging is running at 70% above normal usage, the traffic growth is mostly driven
BY DAG AANENSEN
by sms messages from the Health Authorities and Municipalities to the country´s inhabitants. The spread of Covid-19 virus created an overnight surge for global video conferencing. Zoom experienced a dramatic increase in number of daily participants. Up from 10 mill in Dec 2019 to 300 Mill a day in March 2020. Zoom has shortly become a fast-rising market player in the Nordics, challenging the national carriers and OTT´s. The OTT´s responded quickly and launched new services to meet the massive need for video conferencing. Facebook launched a new web video chat service “Messenger Rooms” for as many as 50 people, “WhatsApp” video calls for up to eight people and video calls on Facebook dating. Facebook video streaming service require enormous amounts of bandwidth capacity and create large amounts of datacentre-to-datacentre traffic.
Mobile data was up 20% with a peak during evening/ night. Video meetings was up 350% and for fixed broadband the traffic was up 40% during business hours (which is normally 08-16 in Norway!) SMS messaging is running at 70% above normal usage
MAY 2020 | ISSUE 112
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