Internet Speeds Have Grown 10X Every 5 Years Since 1990

Access speeds in the U.S. and other markets have grown by an order of magnitude (10x) every five years, since about 1990. If you assume that speeds were about 10 Mbps in 2010, that suggests U.S. consumers will be buying 100 Mbps services by about 2015, and could be buying 1 Gbps services by 2020.

That will be a shock for most ISPs, but would simply follow the pattern of typical bandwidth since 1990.

And that is just what some Internet access speed forecasts would predict. As a rough rule of thumb, speeds have increased by about an order of magnitude every five years.

Availability of 100 Mbps services grew even more: 448 percent between 2010 and 2012. Availability of 50 Mbps services grew 160 percent between 2010 and 2012, the

NTIA study found. 

Australian access speeds show the same trend, with access speeds doubling about every five years.

In August 2000, only 4.4 percent of U.S. households had a home broadband connection, while  41.5 percent of households had dial-up access. At that time, the effective price for a 1-Mbps connection might have been $234.

A decade later, dial-up subscribers declined to 2.8 percent of households in 2010, 68.2 percent of households subscribed to broadband service, with effective prices per Mbps of perhaps a couple to a few dollars.

The availability of 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps Internet access services grew the fastest, from 2010 to 2012, according to a new study by the  National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Though growing from a low base, availability of 1-Gbps services grew nearly 300 percent between 2010 and 2012.