Internet usage up as Aussies stream the big events at Paris 2024

The Paris Olympic Games are already a massive success for Australia with some outstanding individual and team achievements and an amazing medal haul as well. At home, the late – or early hours of the Games means many of us are turning to live-streaming while we lay in bed, and these “streamed” games are pushing our internet usage up, up, up!

Even before the medal rush began streaming service Stan had reported record streaming numbers and with that wealth of choice available it seemed logical that both 9Now and Stan usage was pushing our internet usage at the same time.

Telstra has reported some clear spikes in internet usage/network activity in the early mornings across the past week as Australians tune in for the big events.

Just last week in the hours between 4am and 8am the Telstra network saw an 8% spike compared to the baseline usage.

In simple terms, that equates to 195,000 extra hours of HD Video being streamed by Australians.

To put that in perspective, that’s like watching Ariarne Titmus swim the 400m freestyle over 2.9 million times!

Telstra has ranked these “spikes” on their network with the morning of August 1 taking the Gold. That morning was when Jessica Fox won Gold, Kyle Chalmers won silver and the Matildas ended their run being knocked out in the pool stage. That morning saw a 20% spike in network usage.

Taking Silver with a 19% bump in usage on July 30 was the 5.45am race to see Mollie O’Callaghan and Ariarne Titmus battle for the Gold Medal in the Women’s 200m Freestyle.

Next best was an 11.9% increase for the Bronze on 2nd of August when the Aussie Women’s 4 x 200m Freestyle Relay team won the Gold Medal.

In an attempt to quantify just how much Aussies have turned to the coverage of the games, in particular the streaming, we asked the legends at Aussie Broadband if they had any way to quantify that.

For these games and the next two, the Nine Network owns the rights, and it appears their strategy of pushing a huge amount of live and on-demand content onto the Free ad-supported 9Now as well as their subscription platform Stan is paying off.

Aussie Broadband’s average peak traffic to those services is up from 5Gbps to 21.6Gpbs.

If you’re wondering what that looks like – check this out:

That’s a regular week of “streaming” on 9Now and Stan, then the Games of the 33rd Olympiad kicks off and you can clearly see where that happens!

It’s fantastic to wake up and throw the TV on Channel 9 to get replays and a recap of things, but when you’re keen to see that potential Gold medal event and it’s at 2am or 4am, a lot of us are throwing on headphones laying under the doona and enjoying the Games on our mobile phone:)

Shoutout to Telstra and Aussie Broadband for the cool stats!