Average broadband usage tops half a terabyte in Q4 2021

In its standard quarterly round up the network improvement solutions provider used data aggregated from its broadband management and analytics tools, and believes it has identified a pattern of lockstep growth in usage and speeds in recent years, According to OpenVault, the average in the fourth quarter of 2021 represents a 165% increase over Q4 2017, when consumption was 202.6 GB.

Moreover, OpenVault found that the average download speed of subscribers who consume more than half a terabyte or more of data per month is more than 2X the average speed of those subscribers who are consuming less than half a terabyte. The report also contains a breakdown of average consumption for six different speed tiers, ranging from 1.057 TB for subscribers provisioned for gigabit speeds to 185 GB for subscribers at speeds below 50 Mbps.

Users who consumed 1 TB or more per month represented less than 2% of all subscribers in 2017; in Q4 they represented nearly 16%, a growth factor of more than 750%. In addition, the percentage of super power users who consumed 2 TB or more per month rose even more sharply, from 12% of subscribers in 2017 to 2.65% today – a 20 fold increase.

Nearly one in five subscribers (18%) was now provisioned for broadband speeds of 500 Mbps or faster. Meanwhile, consumption by subscribers on usage-based billing (UBB) plans continues to rise at a slower rate than by those on flat-rate billing (FRB) plans. For q421, year-over-year median growth increased at a rate of 32% for FRB subscribers, almost 3X the 11% growth rate for UBB subscribers.

Consumers have spoken through their use of the Internet,” OpenVault remarked in the OBVI benchmark report. “They are using applications that demand higher bandwidth and that rely on faster speeds and lower latency for an acceptable customer experience. It took about three years for bandwidth usage to double from 270 GB in Q418 to nearly 540 GB in Q421.” Rapid TV News