As many Australians worked from home in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the peak of the country's internet usage came on May 1 at 11am.
The traffic on the National Broadband Network was a huge 67 per cent higher than usual levels.
The jump has been even higher when it comes to uploads, which have jumped 127 per cent up from pre-pandemic levels.
The figures were revealed on Friday by the Department of Infrastructure and Communications during a hearing of the Joint Standing Committee on the NBN.
Communications deputy secretary Richard Windeyer said the department was continuing to meet with NBN Co to discuss how to continue meeting the increased demand of the country.
This has included reducing the number of non-critical system upgrades to avoid some of the usual disruptions.
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Indi MP Helen Haines asked if the standard of the NBN could be sustained into the future, particularly for people choosing to work remotely from regional areas.
"I'm particularly interested, given the desires we have as a nation around moving people into the regions, whether this level could work as an indicator that remote working and access to highly-functional fast internet can continue," she said.
Mr Windeyer said some of the demand would drop off, especially with students returning to school.
"The answer we're all waiting to see is what we've seen during these last few months of COVID actually does endure," he said.
"There's no reason to believe that people will stop necessarily taking telehealth consultations and I think there is a quite a good prospect that where possible, and this obviously doesn't apply to all job types, there will be an increase in people's ability to and interest in being able to work remotely."
He said he was pleased to see the networks hold up during the demand.
"We have demonstrated that the networks in Australia are capable of coping with a very significant increase in overall capacity and shape of use of the network," Mr Windeyer said.
"It has demonstrated that remote work is a possibility."
But while it was a positive story for some, South Australian Senator Stirling Griff also questioned the department about why some people were forced to use satellite internet, rather than the fixed line internet.
"A number of suburban households in particular have been pushed onto satellite connections seemingly to reduce the workload or cost associated with establishing fixed line connections," he said.
"How does your department monitor that NBN is making appropriate connection decisions and has any actions been taken to curtail or pull back this particular behaviour?"
Mr Windeyer said the government closely monitored the NBN's decisions on how the rollout was handled, but did not intervene.
"At the end of the day, those technical planning decisions and work choice decisions are decisions appropriately made by the company rather than us," he said.
