U.S. Broadband Access Median Speeds Increase 20% a Year

Despite some amount of complaining about how slow U.S. high speed access is, and how much it costs, the clear trend over time is in the direction of faster speeds and lower prices, on a dollars per megabit per second basis.

The latest example appears to be packaging changes Comcast will be making, beginning with areas where Comcast competes directly with Verizon's FiOS network.

Apparently, customers currently buying 25 Mbps access and 50 Mbps access will get their speeds doubled, for the same price.

Other tiers will be reconfigured as well. Comcast's 300 Mbps service will sell for $119 a month, when Comcast had previously stated the tier would be 305 Mbps at around $300 a month.

The point is that broadband access speeds keep getting upgraded. And though formal price reductions no longer are very common, as they once were before 2004, for example, the faster speeds now are offered at much more affordable prices, on a dollars per Mbps basis, especially for FiOS customers and cable modem customers.

Since 1994, median advertised speeds have risen steadily, at about a 20 percent compound annual rate.