Sunday, October 29, 2023

What's "Average" in Home Broadband?

As with most anything relating to the internet, “median” or “average” figures often do not reveal as much as we believe, since a relatively small percentage of heavy users exists with larger percentages of light users, along with lots of users somewhere in the middle. 


As a  broad generalization, we might characterize user behavior for any particular app, internet usage in general or data consumption as coming in three buckets.


Consumption

Percentage of users

Heavy

20%

Average

60%

Low

20%


According to data from OpenVault and Ookla, which track internet usage data from millions of broadband customers around the world, heavy users in the U.S. market are defined as those who consume more than 1.2 terabytes of data per month.


“Average” users consume between 300 gigabytes and 1.2 TB of data per month, while light users consume less than 300 GB of data per month. 


As an approximation, home broadband consumers also purchase different tiers of service based on their consumption profiles. The price variance generally is highest for the “heavy” users, where the cost of 1-Gbps service commonly ranges up to about $90 a month, with higher speeds of 2-Gbps, for example, up in the $110 to $125 per month range. 


Consumption

Speed tier

Monthly price

Heavy

2 Gbps or faster

$100-$150

Heavy

1 Gbps

$75-$100

Average

500 Mbps

$50-$75

Low

250 Mbps

$25-$50


Current pricing levels cites by big U.S. internet service providers tends to support the notion of “average” levels of demand with average prices for supplied service. 


AT&T Home Broadband ARPU

Q3'22

Q4'22

Q1'23

Q2'23

Q3'23

Y/Y Growth

Fiber

$62.62

$64.82

$65.92

$66.70

$68.21

8.93%

Non-Fiber

$54.80

$55.54

$56.00

$56.71

$60.43

10.27%

Total Broadband ARPU

$58.63

$60.31

$61.31

$62.26

$64.91

10.71%



Quarter

Comcast ARPU

Charter ARPU

Year-over-year growth rate

Q3 2022

$80.67

$66.10

N/A

Q4 2022

$82.34

$67.75

2.5%

Q1 2023

$83.91

$69.40

4.9%

Q2 2023

$85.48

$71.05

7.4%

Q3 2023

$87.05

$72.70

9.9%


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