How one network is keeping customers connected to the moments that matter during the pandemic

By Comcast

Comcast released 2020 network data showing that years of strategic investment, combined with advancements in network software, were among the primary factors that allowed its network to perform at such a high level throughout a year marked by tens of millions of Americans transitioning to working and learning from home.

2020 traffic patterns revealed a sharp traffic surge in March and April, followed by a transition into a more typical—although still elevated—growth trend throughout the balance of the year.

Broadband network performance was a bright spot during the darkest hours of 2020, keeping hundreds of millions of people connected to work, school, entertainment and, most importantly, each other. Comcast is proud of the years of strategic investment and innovation that enabled the company to build the foundation of a high-speed, intelligent network designed to scale to the needs of the most demanding users, and also adapt to unexpected events.

In the span of four months in the wake of pandemic lockdowns, Comcast’s network experienced almost two years-worth of traffic growth.

Traffic Drivers

While traffic increased across the board, entertainment activities continued to dominate Comcast’s network traffic, with video streaming accounting for 71 percent of all downstream traffic and growing by 70 percent over 2019 levels.

Other key drivers of Comcast’s downstream traffic in 2020 were online gaming and the accompanying software downloads (10 percent), and web browsing (eight percent).

Despite growth in videoconferencing traffic, it still only accounted for less than five percent of Comcast’s overall network usage (included in the other category in the bar graph).

Throughout 2020, Comcast continued to deliver above-advertised speeds to customers across the country, including in areas most affected by covid-19. The remarkable performance of the network during this time can be attributed to outstanding work by engineering and care teams, key innovations and billions of dollars in strategic investment for many years before the pandemic began.

Keeping People Connected

From 2017 through 2020, Comcast invested more than $15 billion to expand, strengthen and evolve its network, including investments to build an additional 39,153 route miles of fiber into the network.

Comcast engineers have developed multiple artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies that make the network faster and more reliable, including Comcast Octave, which was completed ahead of schedule in response to the pandemic. Comcast’s Smart Network Platform automates many core network functions and dramatically reduces both the number of outages and how long they last.

The internet kept us all connected to the things that mattered most during the unprecedented first year of the pandemic, something we can attribute to years of strategic network investment, groundbreaking innovations in network technology and the incredible efforts of employees around the world, from software and network engineers, to frontline workers to customer care professionals.