Italian internet traffic has seen a spike of up to 70% and that’s being attributed to those self-isolating and playing battle royale titles including Fortnite and Call of Duty Warzone.
“We reported an increase of more than 70% of Internet traffic over our landline network, with a big contribution from online gaming such as Fortnite,” Telecom Italia Chief Executive Officer Luigi Gubitosi said to Bloomberg recently.
The Italian ISP said it wasn’t prepared for the surge as it happened, but has since enacted contingency plans to ensure continued connections.
“Telecom Italia’s network is working perfectly and with higher volumes compared with previous days,” the company wrote in an e-mailed statement. “The issues reported affected just some applications and the internet due to a failure of the international network.”
Call of Duty Warzone was recently released to the public, a free-to-play battle royale that needed quite a hefty download before use.
Bloomberg also reports that the UK’s Vodafone is preparing to add network capacity as its users take to self-isolation and social distancing. Sweden’s Telia Carrier, an intercontinental fiber network operator, said it is responding to requests to increase business customers’ bandwidth upgrades.
“All the big players in the video conferencing market have asked for bandwidth upgrades in the last 10 days and some are asking for a fivefold increase,” said Telia’s Mattias Fridstroem. “If no one is able to fly, they will need a huge amount of additional bandwidth.”
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