Data usage runs double the previous year levels since lockdowns

Data usage in Sri Lanka which surged no sooner the stay-at-home orders were imposed are now running at almost twice the amount in the previous year levels in 2019 as people and companies rushed to get connected when they suddenly lost in-person contacts due to the virus.

However, when the economy was running at full speed with eased restrictions, the data usage came down, as there is generally an inverse relationship between the data usage and the lockdowns. But that relationship is fading slowly as people are increasingly use more data for their day-to-day dealings than before the crisis hit, reaching a point that data has become indispensable.

According to data complied by the Central Bank, the data usage which is measured by Petabytes, of which one unit is equivalent to one million Gigabytes suddenly doubled in April from 60PBS in 2019 to 120PBS reflecting the extent of the reliance on people who already had high speed broadband connections at the time.

However, when the economy was partially closed since the start of October, the usage of data shot up to 160PBS by December from about 110PBS in September, the lowest usage reached since the lockdown began from March as that was when the economy returned to near normality before the virus struck again in October.

The other instance when the data usage came down was two months ago in February 2021 when the economy was fully functional with very minimum restrictions as virus scare was fading. But even during February, the data usage held up at 140PBS, coming down from around 160PBS in January 2021. The data usage in the corresponding month in 2020 was 90PB and 60PB in 2019.

Hence every time when the usage came down, it never came down to previous year levels but settled at much higher levels indicating that people and businesses transact in data more than ever before, and is growing. The sudden tripling of data usage in the second round of lockdown since October was a sign of people and companies were more ready than before with their connectivity and device infrastructure to deal with similar lockdowns had in March.

And that investment paid off as they could mostly function seamlessly as office based work and education shifted to digital platforms with minimum disruptions, which helped most of the economic activities to hold up as seen from the Gross Domestic Product data in the quarter.

“Data usage has shown strong growth, highlighting continuity of economic activity through online platforms and work-from-home arrangements”, the Central Bank said.

In any case, the data and specially the so-called big tech companies in the world which infiltrate into the people’s lives through data are making an irreversible damage to human interactions and value systems, as they have gained the ability to sway the public discourse, making them the most powerful entities, both economically and politically.