While AT&T's core network traffic is still above its baseline levels, the increases actually dropped a bit last week. AT&T's core network traffic, which includes business, home broadband and wireless usage, went from a 26% increase—compared to a similar day at the end of February— on Thursday to an 18% increase on Saturday.
The drop in core network traffic could have been due to work from home employees taking the day off on Saturday. Saturday's core network traffic increase was slightly below AT&T's pre-coronavirus baseline and March's number. An AT&T spokesperson said AT&T couldn't account for the change in the core network traffic for those days, but did say the numbers fluctuate.
The peak increase of 28% for core network traffic came on Thursday of last week, which was below March's increase and higher than the pre-COVID-19 baseline of 25%. During the same time frame in March, the core network traffic increase was more than 30%.
Compared to an average Saturday, consumer home voice calling minutes were up 43% this past Saturday versus a 35% increase on Friday. Wireless voice minutes increased 16% on Saturday compared to 19% on Friday while Wi-Fi calling minutes were 52% on Saturday compared to 72% on Friday. AT&T said the data for Friday's wireless voice minutes, Wi-Fi calling minutes and consumer home voice minutes were based on data from Wednesday through Friday.
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Last week, Verizon reported that some of its key metrics were seeing lower increases than previous weeks during the coronavirus pandemic.
AT&T also said on Friday that it had expanded the circuit bandwidth for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to support a five-time increase in remote virtual private networking capabilities in order to help USACE manage logistics.