Headline Home Broadband Speeds and Real-World Buying Patterns

It always is instructive to compare advertised headline speeds with the services customers actually buy, as the mismatch is often striking. Despite all the talk of “gigabit per second” and “multi-gigabit per second services, most customers do not buy them. 

This analysis by Ofcom of the actual speed plans U.K. customers were buying between 2018 and 2022 shows that most customers were purchasing speeds in the range of 30 Mbps to 100 Mbps for the whole period. 

                      Home Broadband Advertised Speeds Take Rates

    Nov '18 Nov '19 Nov '20 Mar '21 Mar '22

10 Mbps or less         2%     1%     1%     0%     0%

<10 Mbps >30 Mbps 33%     24%     15%     15%     9%

<30 >100 Mbps         48%     56%     60%     60%     65%

<100 Mbps >300         16%     16%     20%     19%     19%

300 Mbps or more         1%     3%     4%     5%     8%

source: Ofcom 

As you might expect, there has been a shift towards higher speeds over time. One finds the same general pattern in the U.S. market: about 15 percent of customers buy services operating at 1 Gbps or faster; about seven percent take services offering 500 Mbps to 900 Mbps; while 55 percent buy service at speeds between 200 Mbps and 400 Mbps. 

source: OpenVault  

Global average speeds are lower.

source: Hootsuite 

Many estimate that by 2025, the “average” home broadband user might still require less than 300 Mbps worth of capacity. Nielsen’s law of course predicts that the top available commercial speeds in 2025 will be about 10 Gbps. 

source: NCTA 

But “headline” speed services will not be the products most home broadband consumers buy.