2020 Network Report

As the world approaches the one-year anniversary of the widespread pandemic stay-at-home shift, 2020 traffic patterns reveal 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. Traffic patterns remained highly asymmetrical, as downstream traffic volumes were 14x higher than upstream traffic volumes throughout 2020. Peak Internet traffic rose 32 percent over pre-pandemic levels, and over 50 percent in some markets in March. Peak downstream traffic in 2020 increased approximately 38 percent over 2019 levels and peak upstream traffic increased approximately 56 percent over 2019 levels. In the span of 4 months in the wake of pandemic lockdowns, Comcast’s network experienced almost 2 years-worth of traffic growth.