Grove City, PA – March 25, 2020 – As area residents are spending more and more time inside during the COVID-19 pandemic, data is being consumed at levels not seen before. Armstrong has seen data usage double in just the past week. Because the company has invested millions of dollars to build high-performance and reliable broadband networks, we now stand ready to meet the needs of consumers, businesses, and anchor institutions to more easily cope with the spread of the virus, affording our customers the ability to stay in contact with their families and neighbors and engage in telework, distant learning, and telehealth.
“Our peak usage used to occur in the evening,” stated Melinda Weaver General Manager of the Grove City system, “What we’re seeing now is that peak time has started to shift a little more toward the mid-day.” Fortunately, Armstrong’s network has been engineered for the future and is handling the increase in traffic. Armstrong teams continue to work around the clock, identifying customer needs and performing preventative network maintenance. “The other thing we’re seeing is much more upstream use,” continued Melinda Weaver. “We are now seeing more upstream traffic because people are video conferencing. However, it’s still well within the network utilization.”
Data allowances for all residential Internet service levels have been suspended for at least the next 60 days as part of Armstrong’s support of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s Keep America Connected initiative. The most popular level of Zoom Internet service recently had its download speed increased to 150 Mbps.
As consumers will remain reliant on Zoom Internet to support this new way of life, Armstrong continues to evaluate customer needs and make product adjustments, as well as monitoring what major traffic contributors like Netflix and Google are doing to manage demand on networks globally. Customers will not only require Zoom for working, learning and communicating from home, but also providing the delivery of video, social media, gaming and many other ways of keeping families functioning well into the future.
For the latest information on how Armstrong is responding to the situation around Coronavirus/COVID-19, customers can visit ArmstrongOneWire.com/COVID19.