U.K. mobile service provider EE reports a 45 percent increase in communications app traffic on its network, including WhatsApp, Houseparty, Skype and Teams between February 2020 to May 2020, because of the Covid-19 lockdown.
Because of the lockdown, network usage also changed. EE’s busiest sites shifted from cities to suburban areas. Stevenage, a popular London commuter town, saw a 120 percent increase in data usage for communication apps, for example.
Voice calls lasting for more than five minutes doubled, with overall voice usage increasing by 45 percent.
Users of video conferencing app Zoom grew more than five times.
What changes could be permanent when the pandemic ends is the question. If the former underlying and pre-existing trends and behaviors mostly reassert themselves, behaviors will not change as much as some believe.
Despite frequent predictions that “nothing will be the same” after the Covid-19 pandemic ends, it likely will be hard to quantify the impact over a longer period of time, say five to 10 years. That has been the case when looking at changes after the internet bubble burst of 2001, the Great Recession of 2008 or events such as 9/11.
This forecast of hyperscale data center revenues from 2018 to 2024 might provide an example. One cannot actually see the impact of the pandemic. In some cases, it might take two to four years for prior trends to reassert themselves. In some cases it will not even take that long to hide the Covid-19 impact on time series data sets.
The point is that predictions that “everything has changed” or that a “new normal” will emerge post-Covid are likely to disappoint those who want those changes to happen. Underlying trends tend to reassert themselves once a disruptive event has happened, and passed.
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