6 Months In: Unyielding Connections in the Age of COVID-19

We have sustained experience and responsibilities like few other companies during the coronavirus pandemic. You don’t design a network for a pandemic per se. But it turns out that investing more than $135 billion over the past 5 years¹ to build a robust network with self-healing architectures and open standards can help ready it for just about anything. Today, we’re continuing to see high demand for more connectivity-based services and our network is performing well. We’re carrying more data than ever before. In fact, the AT&T Global Network carries more than 391.8 petabytes of data traffic on an average day. That’s up nearly 20% compared to pre-pandemic figures. And we expect continued growth with the (virtual) school year in full swing and proliferated telework environments across the country. We’re seeing more than just a big jump in data consumption too. As work and school locations have switched from the office and classroom setting to the kitchen table, our voice and wireline network traffic has increased while our mobility data traffic is now more distributed:

• Text – Customers have set a record for text messages during the pandemic 2 times. During the March spring break timeframe and on Easter weekend, people sent more than 23,000 texts/second across the AT&T Network. The previous peak (pre-pandemic) was 15,000 texts/second.
• Voice – Wireless voice usage has soared, with a nearly 40% increase, as people began to work from home and use their mobile devices to attend meetings and connect with colleagues.
• Data – Mobile data volume has slightly decreased during COVID-19 since people are able to connect to their home Wi-Fi throughout the day.