Case study: COVID-19 - a lesson in getting things right

Every crisis is a learning opportunity for individuals, organisations and, sometimes, whole industries. It can reveal both weaknesses and strengths.

The COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, which coincided with the end of the NBN rollout, demonstrated that Australia's telecommunications network operators are generally well equipped to respond to a crisis that places significant unforeseen pressure on national networks.

During the initial COVID-19 lockdown in April 2020, demand on the NBN network increased by an average of 71%.29 Videoconference operators reported an 85% rise in adoption rates.30 Australia's telecommunications networks could handle this rapid growth because:

• the NBN had upgraded many areas of the national network with latent capacity to accommodate growth

• all the larger service providers had comprehensive contingency plans, mature capacity planning and the ability to rapidly upgrade transmission network capacity and optimise network traffic.

The NBN was ready

By the time the pandemic hit, 99% of the NBN was complete, allowing almost all households to get a broadband connection. Parallel work on network capacity enabled Australia to conduct the national lockdown without closing down the economy.

Network providers were responsive

At the height of the pandemic, millions of people worked from home, enjoyed at-home digital entertainment, relied more on online shopping and spent more time on data-intense applications such as gaming.31 This placed significant extra demand on all networks.

More importantly, a shift to upstream data usage through Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and videoconferencing profoundly changed the nature of internet traffic. It created data demand levels in some suburbs that would normally only be seen in a central business district.

Responding to the increased data traffic, major fixed and mobile networks made adequate network capacity available. Major video content providers agreed with NBN Co to reduce video definition for streamed content, which brought the data load for such applications down by 25%.32 NBN Co also took steps to mitigate the impact of extra demand by:33

• allocating 40% free CVC capacity (network bandwidth that is allocated to each customer of a retailer) to all retail service providers to reduce the risk of congestion without burdening retail service providers with unforeseen extra wholesale costs

• making adequate capacity available where needed to ensure the busiest nodes could cope

• launching a $150 million financial relief and assistance fund to help customers in hardship.

Due to the comprehensive actions taken by NBN Co and changes to streaming protocols made by major content providers, average downstream speeds improved for most NBN speed tiers.34

In parallel, each of Australia's mobile network operators took a wide range of actions to ensure Australia remained connected. This included data traffic optimisation, emergency capacity upgrades in high-demand areas, debt relief for customers in hardship, and moving maintenance windows to overnight so services for people working from home were not interrupted.

Considering the experience of other countries in responding to COVID-19, Australia may have been digitally well prepared to deal with the pandemic.