OVBI: Broadband Speeds Shifting into High Gear

Dramatic increases in provisioned broadband speeds are continuing to shift the broadband landscape, including a continued increase in gigabit tier adoption, as well as migration of subscribers to speeds of 200 Mbps or higher. About 15% of subscribers were on gigabit tier plans in 3Q22, an increase of 35% over the 11.4% figure in 3Q21, and the percentage of subscribers on plans between 200-400 Mbps doubled to 54.8% from 27.4% in 3Q21. At the end of the third quarter, only 4.7% of all subscribers were provisioned for speeds of less than 50 Mbps, a reduction of more than 50% from the 3Q21 figure of 9.8%. Gigabit tier subscribers are up more than 600% since the third quarter of 2019, the report notes. “This trend is impacting bandwidth usage characteristics, with faster growth in power users and median bandwidth usage,” it adds. Other findings in the 3Q22 report include:

• Average monthly usage of 495.5 GB was up 13.9% from 3Q21’s average of 434.9 GB, and represented a slight increase over 2Q22’s 490.7 GB. Median broadband was up 14.3% year over year, representing broader growth across all subscribers.
• Year-over-year growth of power users of 1TB or more was 18%, to 13.7% of all subscribers, while the super power user category of consumers of 2 TB or more rose almost 50% during the same time frame.
• Participants in the American Connectivity Program consumed 615.2 GB of data in 3Q22, 24% more than the 495.5 used by the general population.