The Demand for Broadband Speed

The recent decision of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to increase the definition of broadband from 25/3 Mbps to 100/20 Mbps got me thinking about the long term trajectory of the demand for broadband speed. One way to think about future demand is to look back at the broadband speeds 25 years ago. In 1999, both telcos and cable companies offered 1 Mbps DSL broadband connection as an upgrade to dial-up—and 1 Mbps became the de facto definition of broadband at the time. Twenty five years later, the definition of broadband was increased to 100 Mbps, a 100-fold increase. There are a lot of reasons to think that the demand for faster speeds will keep growing. Every year we find more uses for fast broadband. If we plot the demand for broadband speeds out for 25 more years, at the historical rate of growth, demand would be 100 times higher in 25 years than it is today. That would mean the right definition of broadband in 25 years would be 10 gigabits. I know that a lot of people will jump all over this prediction and say it’s ludicrous and unrealistic—but think about 1999. You would have been hard pressed to find anybody in 1999 who would have predicted that the definition of download speed in 2022 would be 100 Mbps.