Estimating Broadband Customers

There has been a huge shift in broadband subscriptions from early in the pandemic until the end of 2021. Increasingly, customers are signing up for faster broadband speed tiers. It’s obvious that a lot of people have upgraded their broadband subscription during the eighteen months. I’ve heard a lot of anecdotal evidence to support this from my internet service provider (ISP) clients. My consulting firm does a lot of surveys and interviews, and we’ve been seeing this shift everywhere. Unfortunately, for some households, changing to a faster download speed didn’t bring any relief if their real problem was upload speed – but they upgraded and are not likely going to back to the slower speed tiers. Of particular note is the big shift of homes that used to subscribe to speeds under 100 Mbps. In just 18 months, that dropped from 29 percent of all households down to 17 percent. A shift that large sticks a fork into the idea that the public is interested in any broadband product under 100 Mbps. The public is defining the definition of broadband even if the Federal Communications Commission won’t. I think a new ISP needs to dig in and do the market research through surveys to get a better feel for how a given market will act. It’s a new world for anybody that wants to accurately predict how their business will fare – but the good news is that customers seem willing to pay extra for faster speeds.

[Doug Dawson is president of CCG Consulting.]