Broadband data usage growth driven by photo uploads
I’m installing a RaspberryPi computer at home carrying an IPCortex PBX with SIP trunks. I just needed to find a free IP address and found myself checking out available addresses so that I could provide a static one to the IPCortex.
I just happened to find myself looking at my home broadband data usage and came up with some interesting stats.
The first chart plots the growth in my overall
usage for the last four years. It actually shows almost an order of magnitude (20GB to 160GB) growth from the lowest point in 2008 to the highest point this year.
I realise this is not scientific but you can easily see the trend. The rise in upload usage in the May/June time frame (2nd chart) this year coincides with my taking proud possession of the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the fact that all photos now get backed up to Google+. 
The final chart shows the growth in photo storage needs this year and you can see a very good correlation between photo storage and the growth in bandwidth upload usage.
The numbers don’t exactly match because we use the home broadband connection for other applications and I, being both gregarious and fertile, do not live alone.
I haven’t drilled into specifics but a reasonable chunk of the photo storage space is now used for video. I do both a daily (ish) video diary for the kids and take lots of “generally interesting” videos. Check this one out from the weekend visit to the Beamish Open Air Museum in county Durham.
2 replies on “Home broadband data usage growth”
Interesting statistics Tref. Makes me wish that I had started to track monthly usage now as my average monthly download is about 56GB. Upload this month is about 5GB. I have asked BT is there is any way of obtaining historical just out of curiosity and to compare with the growth that you have shown here.
My youngest daughter has discovered Skype so I’m expecting an increase in usage, especially as I saw her on a four way video chat with her friends the other night discussing homework………..an Club Penguin tactics of course!
I guess because I can look at our internal systems it is easier for me to extract the data.