“Average” tends to be misleading for most things related to use of the internet, especially when using the arithmetic average (mean) rather than median approaches. In the fourth quarter of 2020, for example, mean data consumption by U.S. households was about 483 gigabytes, while median consumption was 294 GB (half higher, half lower).
The significant difference is “power user” data consumption. About two percent of users consume more than 2 terabytes of data per month, while 15 percent consume at least 1 TB per month. That skews the (mean) average consumption.
The Covid-19 work from home and stay at home policies caused an immediate spike in consumer fixed network data consumption, which has persisted at new and higher levels.
Perhaps one way to describe consumer behavior is to note that half of U.S. households (51 percent) purchase service plans offering 100 Mbps to 200 Mbps downstream speeds. Less than a quarter buys speeds slower than 75 Mbps, while 30 percent or so buy plans running faster than 200 Mbps.
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