OpenVault: Business, Residential Peak Day Broadband Usage Up From 2021
Business upload and download traffic each more than doubled.
Jake Neenan

WASHINGTON, May 30, 2025 – Peak day broadband usage among businesses more than doubled since 2021, according to a report from OpenVault. Peak residential usage also increased significantly.
Among businesses, peak day upload traffic increased 102 percent and download traffic increased 105 percent from 2021 to 2025, the report found. That’s compared to a 75.8 percent increase in peak residential upload traffic and 59 percent increase in residential download.
Peak day measurements are from the day of the week that sees the highest average usage. The data was collected from OpenVault’s network management software products. OpenVault linked the increased business usage to workplaces reopening after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Gallup found 19 percent of remote-capable employees worked exclusively on-site as of March, still way down from before the pandemic. But the group found many formerly remote workers have been shifting to at least some time in the office, with 55 percent of remote-capable employees reporting a hybrid schedule.
OpenVault also found overall usage growth increased by 9.5 percent year-over-year, the most since 2022, with upload usage ticking up more than 17 percent.
"Upstream consumption growth rates have outpaced downstream for several consecutive quarters as video calls, cloud backups, IoT uplinks, etc. are becoming more significant in the subscriber mix," the company wrote.
Peak hour traffic, the hour of a given month with the higher per-subscriber usage, was also accelerating according to the company. The year-over-year growth in peak hour usage for business upload and download as well as residential upload was higher in the first quarter of 2025 than the average since 2021. Residential download growth was stable.