A Mature Broadband Market?

It is becoming clear that the broadband market is reaching maturity. This is already causing havoc in the industry for internet service providers that relied on year-over-year customer growth to prop up stock prices. New Street Research, a company that specializes in research in the telecommunications and technology sectors, said that it estimated that new broadband customers would grow by about 1 million this year. That’s roughly equal to the number of new households expected to be created during the year. This is down from the two to three million new broadband subscribers added every year since 2017. It’s always risky to say that the broadband market has matured, and experts who predicted this in the past turned out to be wrong. But we are clearly approaching the point where households that can afford to buy home broadband probably have it—and that is the definition of a mature market.