At Least 1/2 of Typical U.S. Consumers Will be Using 100 Mbps by About 2020, Really

Wireless, either mobile or fixed, seems an inevitable solution for providing broadband access in rural areas, everywhere in the world.

Over time, the solution choices are likely to shift, if one assume gigabit access really is the future. 

In the meantime, to about 2020 or 2025, the issue really will be getting to a fairly widespread 100 Mbps.

In fact, a reasonable forecast would have about half of U.S. broadband access users buying 100 Mbps connections by about 2020.

About 10 percent will be buying 50 Mbps connections.

Nearly 24 percent will still be buying 24 Mbps service.

That might seem a crazy amount of bandwidth for “many typical users,” but standard technology forecasting techniques have, for more than a decade, actually suggested that would happen.

In 2001, for example, Technology Futures predicted that by year-end 2004, over 25 percent of U.S. households will have adopted broadband services, up from about five percent at the end of 2000. The actual U.S. broadband penetration rate was 30 percent, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

“By 2010, we expect that the percentage will exceed 60 percent,” Technology Futures predicted in 2001. The actual penetration wound up being 66 percent.

“Our forecasts indicate that 1.5 Mbps will meet the typical user's expectations until about 2005, that 6 Mbps will do so until about 2010, then 24 Mbps until 2015, and finally 100 Mbps thereafter,” Technology Futures said in 2001.

There is at this point little reason to doubt that the forecast will continue to be substantially correct. Keep in mind that the 100 Mbps forecast by 2020 represents the “typical user’s” access speed, not the top “headline speed.”