What drives broadband traffic?

Worldwide, there is an ongoing policy and regulatory push to make very high-speed broadband available as widely as possible. Underlying the policy interventions to support higher speeds is an implicit assumption that higher speeds will enable different (and socially valuable) uses. Extensive data on usage published by the UK telecommunications regulator finds that the linkage between broadband speeds and traffic per line—allowing for demographic factors—shows that higher speed has a weak relationship to traffic. This suggests that mid-speed broadband is not a constraint on household usage (as measured by traffic), and thus the benefits of policy interventions to support higher speeds remain somewhat speculative.