Home Broadband Speeds Reaching Multi-Gigabit Levels

Home broadband speeds have climbed for more than two decades and virtually nobody expects that trend to stop. Consider the growing number of internet service providers offering gigabit and multi-gigabit home broadband services.  

A 2022 Omdia survey of 760 home broadband service providers across 178 geographies found that 60 percent of service providers offered service plans operating at 1 Gbps or higher. In North America, 13 percent of service providers already had begun offering multi-gigabit speeds, Omdia says. 

Region	# of service providers surveyed	% SPs offering 1Gbps or faster
Asia & Oceania	144	51%
EMEA	392	57%
Latin America & Caribbean	71	20%
North America	160	88%

source: Omdia 

The other observation is that some form of “digital divide” seems likely to persist, as rural networks tend not to match the performance of urban networks. Networks in developed countries tend to outpace networks in developing regions. 

And beyond availability (potential customers can buy), consumers make their own decisions about what to buy, and why. As a rule, customers tend not to buy the most-pricey, highest-performance tiers of service. Instead, they tend to buy service somewhere in the middle. 

In 2022, for example, North American home broadband customers mostly were buying services operating between 100 Mbps and 500 Mbps, according to Omdia. That was neither the slowest nor the fastest tiers of service available.

source: Omdia 

Over time, that “typical” service level will shift upwards and to the right. But most customers will still be buying service somewhere in the middle.