Virgin Media O2 saw its highest traffic peak on record on Wednesday 19 October as football fans tuned in to watch last week’s Premier League matches on Prime Video and gamers preloaded the latest Call of Duty game – Modern Warfare 2 – ahead of its main release on Thursday 31 October.
With Prime Video showing five live Premier League matches during the evening of Wednesday 19 October, and Activision’s release of the pre-download file – 36.2GB on the PS5 – of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Virgin Media O2’s network data consumption significantly spiked before peaking at 9:20pm – when traffic was up 40% compared to an average weeknight in 2022.
In the space of just a few hours (6pm-12am), the average broadband user consumed a whopping 8.43GB of data.
Whilst Virgin Media O2 has seen several spikes in recent years with the pandemic driving digital transformation, the latest traffic peak was 6.6% higher than the previous record set on 28th of December 2021, when the country was battling the Omicron wave, and six Premier League games were live on Prime Video.
Jeanie York, Chief Technology Officer at Virgin Media O2 said, “Whilst we’re used to seeing sustained growth in usage and significant spikes on our network, the latest Prime Premier League games and Call of Duty: Warzone 2 release has smashed our previous traffic peak record out of the park – with traffic at heights hard to imagine even just a few years ago.
“Whilst it’s hard to predict what will come next in the world of streaming and gaming, one thing is for certain; with gigabit speeds and an ultra-reliable service to match, we have the network that is ready for it all.”
With huge file sizes and a large fan base, Call of Duty has continued to cause significant spikes on Virgin Media O2’s broadband network. In April, Call of Duty: Warzone Season 3 and Black Ops updates caused Virgin Media O2’s previous biggest gaming traffic spike on record and in 2021, Call of Duty: Warzone helped drive Virgin Media’s biggest download day on record at the time, where the average user downloaded more than 20GB of data in a single day.
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