Most People Probably Pay Less for Home Broadband Than We Think

It always is difficult to ascertain what “most” consumers actually are paying for home broadband service, partly because people choose a range of plans (faster speeds cost more); partly because many buy service only in a bundle, so there is not actual discrete and identifiable cost. 

In the U.S.  market that is a pronounced issue, as an estimated 70 percent of home broadband services are purchased as part of a bundle. So most of the market arguably buys home broadband in a way that obscures the actual cost. Only about 30 percent of buyers choose a service with a clear recurring price. 

Platform	Typical Speeds	Data Allowance	Monthly Price Range	Common Characteristics
Satellite	~25–30 Mbps download ~3–5 Mbps upload	10–20 GB/month (with some unlimited options at higher prices)	~$75–$85	Mainly chosen in rural or remote areas; higher latency and data caps are common; plans often come with extra fees for overage.
Cable TV	~100 Mbps (often scalable to 200+ Mbps in some markets)	Unlimited data (with occasional fair-use policies)	~$55–$65	The most popular option in urban/suburban areas; offers a good balance of speed and cost; bundle options with TV/phone are common.
Telco (Fiber/DSL)	~100–200 Mbps (fiber often delivers symmetrical speeds)	Typically unlimited or very high data limits	~$60–$70	Fiber plans (e.g., Verizon Fios, AT&T Fiber) are prized for reliability and speed; DSL remains common where fiber isn’t available.
Independent ISP	~50–150 Mbps	Varies, but often unlimited or high caps	~$50–$60	Smaller regional providers often offer competitive pricing and personalized service; plan details can be more tailored.
Fixed Wireless	~25–50 Mbps	Often moderate data caps (e.g., 250 GB/month) or unlimited with speed throttling	~$50–$60	Frequently used in rural or underserved areas; installation can be simpler and faster; speeds may vary with weather and line-of-sight conditions.
Mobile Broadband	Varies (commonly 10–30 Mbps when used as a home hotspot)	Often included as part of an unlimited smartphone plan or separate data allotment	~$55–$65	Purchased as a hotspot or integrated into a mobile plan; flexibility for on-the-go usage, but performance depends on network congestion and coverage.

And estimates vary dramatically when bundled service costs are considered. Where the estimated cost of a cable TV stand-alone service might be between $55 and $65 a month for 100 Mbps service, that same service might “cost” only about $30 to $40 a month when purchased as part of a bundle. 

Platform	Estimated Broadband Cost Portion	Notes
Cable TV	~$30–$40/month	Cable bundles often offer broadband at a discounted rate compared to standalone options, as the service is cross-subsidized by TV/phone components.
Telco (Fiber/DSL)	~$35–$45/month	Fiber bundles tend to emphasize higher speeds and reliability; the broadband portion may carry a slight premium compared to cable but still remains competitively priced in a bundle.
Fixed Wireless	~$30–$40/month	Often offered in rural or underserved regions, these bundles provide broadband at rates similar to cable bundles, though speed and data policies can vary.
Mobile Broadband	~$30–$40/month	When integrated into smartphone or home hotspot bundles, the effective broadband cost is often reduced as part of multi-line or data-centric deals.

Good Outcomes Beat Good Intentions: How Dumb Are We?

Good intentions clearly are not enough when designing policies to improve home broadband availability in underserved areas. In fact, since 2021, more than three years after its passage, the U.S. Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program has yet to install a single new connection.  

It seems we were determined to make the perfect the enemy of the good, preventing construction until we mostly were certain our maps were accurate. A rival approach would have proceeded on the assumption that residents and service providers pretty much know where they have facilities and where they do not; where an upgrade can be conducted fast and easily, and where it cannot. 

And perhaps (despite the clear industry participant interests that always seem to influence our decisions) we should not have insisted on the “fastest speed” platforms. Maybe we’d have prioritized “good enough” connections that could be supplied really fast and enabled the outcomes we were looking for (getting the unconnected connected; getting the underserved facilities that do not impede their use of internet apps). 

This is not, to use the phrase, “rocket science.” We have known for many decades that “good enough” home broadband can be supplied fast, and affordably, if we use satellite (geostationary or low earth orbit, but particularly now LEO) or wireless to enable the connections. 

To those who say we need to supply fiber to the home, some of us might argue the evidence suggests relatively-lower speed (such as 100 Mbps downstream) connections supply all the measurable upside we seek, for homework, shopping, telework. The touted gigabit-per-second or multi-gigabit-per-second connections are fine, but there is very little evidence consumers can even use that much bandwidth. 

Study/Source	Key Findings
Distinguishing Bandwidth and Latency in Households' Willingness to Pay for Broadband Internet Speed (2017)	Consumers value increasing bandwidth from 10 to 25 Mbps at about $24 per month, but the additional value of increasing from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps is only $19. This suggests diminishing returns for speeds beyond 100 Mbps.
Are you overpaying for internet speeds you don't need? (2025)	Research indicates that many Australians are overspending on high-speed internet connections they don't need. Most households can manage well with a 50 Mbps plan unless they engage in high-bandwidth tasks like 4K streaming or online gaming.
Simple broadband mistake costing 9.5 million households up to £113 extra a year (2024)	Millions of UK households are overpaying for broadband by purchasing higher speeds than necessary. Smaller households often need speeds up to 15 Mbps but pay for over 150 Mbps, wasting £113 annually.
ITIF (2023)	- US broadband speeds outpace everyday demands - Only 9.1% of households choose to adopt 250/25 Mbps speeds when available - Clear inflection point past 100 Mbps where consumers no longer see value in higher speeds
ITIF (2020)	- Average existing connections comfortably handle more than typical applications require - A household with 5 people streaming 4K video simultaneously only needs 2/3 of current average tested speed - Research shows reaching a critical threshold of basic broadband penetration is more important for economic growth than faster speeds
European Research (2020)	- Full fiber networks are not worth the costs - Partial, not full end-to-end fiber-based broadband coverage entails the largest net benefits
US Broadband Data Analysis	- Compared to normal-speed broadband, faster broadband did not generate greater positive effects on employment
OpenVault Q3 2024 Report	- Average US household uses 564 Mbps downstream and 31 Mbps upstream - Speeds around 500 Mbps sufficient for most families
FCC Guidelines	- 100-500 Mbps is enough for 1-2 people to run videoconferencing, streaming, and online gaming simultaneously - 500-1000 Mbps suitable for 3 or more people with high bandwidth needs

We might all agree that, where it is feasible, fiber to home makes the most long-term sense. But we might also agree that where we want useful home broadband speeds, right now, everywhere, with performance that enables remote work, homework, online shopping and all other internet apps, then any platform delivering 100 Mbps (more for multi-user households, but likely not more than 500 Mbps even in the most-challenging use cases) will do the job, right now. 

Good intentions really are not enough. Good outcomes are what we seek. And that often means designing programs that we can implement fast, at lower cost, with wider impact, immediately or nearly so. “Better” platforms that cost more and are not built are hardly better.

Comcast "Low Lag" Consumer Internet Access Service Gets Commercialized

Network neutrality rules have barred the sort of quality-assurance features for consumer service that Comcast now is preparing to introduce nationwide, in stages. But such rules now are in abeyance in the U.S. market. 

The “low-lag” service aims to improve experience for “interactive applications like gaming, videoconferencing, and virtual reality.” 

Of course, behind all the marketing hype we can be expected to hear are some physical realities. Since the internet is actually a “network of networks,” either bandwidth or latency issues are generally not under any single participant’s control. No matter what performance is claimed on any single physical infrastructure, the end-to-end path packets take is non-determinstic. 

In other words, the exact path cannot be specified rigorously and always. All of which means actual performance is difficult to guarantee. For Comcast, which also uses a hybrid fiber coax access network, there are other practical considerations as well.

It is generally agreed that latency performance actually is best on a fiber-to-home connection, moderate on a hybrid fiber coax or copper digital subscriber line connection and worse on a geosynchronous satellite connection (which is one touted advantage of internet access from low-earth-orbit satellite constellations). 

The point is that lots of independent variables must be controlled to ensure low end-to-end latency performance. 

Latency Source	Typical Contribution (%)	Description
In-Home Network (Wi-Fi, Router, LAN)	5–20%	Wi-Fi interference, old routers, and internal LAN delays can introduce latency. Ethernet generally has lower latency than Wi-Fi.
ISP Core & Access Network	10–30%	Delays within the ISP's infrastructure, including fiber, cable, or DSL transmission, routing, and congestion effects.
Internet Backbone & Peering	20–50%	Transit across multiple networks, routing inefficiencies, and the number of hops between ISPs contribute to this latency.
Far-End Server Processing	10–40%	The speed at which the destination server processes and responds to requests, affected by server load, geographic distance, and CDN availability.

Processing delays in routers or switches can affect latency, but so does the distance a packet has to travel and the actual choice of networks over which any particular packet is forwarded. 

As a rule, observers expect the lowest latency (1–5 ms) on optical fiber networks. HFC/DSL latency is more often characterized as 10 to 30 ms). Geosynchronous satellite:connections have high latency (500–700 ms).

But latency can happen for any number of reasons. Long distances are an issue. So is network congestion caused heavy router and switch demand at peak hours of usage. Packet routes with more “hops” (segments) will increase latency as well. 

Latency might also be increased by heavier concurrent use of many applications on a bandwidth-limited connection as well. 

The physical well being of all physical elements (switches, routers, cables, connectors) also makes a difference. Signal interference for Wi-Fi routers or other signal barriers such as walls also make a difference. 

Server-side delays on the far end of a consumer’s internet connection also play a role in latency performance. 

Latency is an issue different from bandwidth and arguably is a more complex problem to solve.for an internet access end user.

Latency is the delay in data transmission, measured in milliseconds (ms). It represents how long it takes for a data packet to travel from the source to the destination and back. High latency causes lag, which is especially noticeable in real-time applications like video calls, gaming, or financial trading.

ISPs use several techniques to reduce latency, including optimized routing of packets, aided by direct peering arrangements with  other transport providers. More-deterministic routing protocols (BGP) also help. 

Since distance contributes to latency, content delivery networks are used to put content closer to actual end users. Edge computing and server colocation are forms of this strategy. 

Traffic shaping is another possible tactic, allowing some classes of traffic priority over delivery of other less-sensitive traffic. Giving priority to videoconferencing, voice, virtual reality or gaming bits are examples. 

Other methods to avoid excessive buffering or congestion also help. It is not clear which of these techniques Comcast will use, but a reasonable guess is “all of the above.”

AI "Performance Plateau" is to be Expected

There is much talk now about generative artificial intelligence model improvement rates slowing. But such slowdowns are common for most--if not all--technologies. In fact, "hitting the performance plateau," is common. 

For generative AI, the “scaling” problem is at hand. The generative AI scaling problem refers to diminishing returns from increasing model size (number of parameters), the amount of training data, or computational resources.

In the context of generative AI, power laws describe how model performance scales with increases in resources such as model size, dataset size, or compute power. And power laws suggest performance gains will diminish as models grow larger or are trained on more data.

Power laws also mean that although model performance improves with larger training datasets, but the marginal utility of more data diminishes.

Likewise, the use of greater computational resources yields diminishing returns on performance gains.

But that is typical for virtually all technologies: performance gains diminish as additional inputs are increased. Eventually, however, workarounds are developed in other ways. Chipmakers facing a slowing of Moore’s Law rates of improvement got around those limits by creating multi-layer chips, using parallel processing or specialized architectures for example

Technology	Performance Plateau	Key Challenges	Breakthroughs or Workarounds
Steam Engines	Efficiency plateaued due to thermodynamic limits (Carnot cycle).	Material limitations and lack of advanced thermodynamics.	Development of internal combustion engines and electric motors.
Railroads	Speed and efficiency stagnated with steam locomotives.	Limited by steam engine performance and infrastructure capacity.	Introduction of diesel and electric trains.
Aviation	Propeller-driven planes hit speed and altitude limits (~400 mph).	Aerodynamic inefficiency and piston engine limitations.	Jet engines enabled supersonic and high-altitude flight.
Telecommunications	Copper wire networks reached data transmission capacity limits.	Signal attenuation and bandwidth limitations of copper cables.	Transition to fiber-optic technology and satellite communication.
Automotive Engines	Internal combustion engine efficiency (~30% thermal efficiency).	Heat losses and material constraints in engine design.	Adoption of hybrid and electric vehicle technologies.
Semiconductors (Moore's Law)	Scaling transistors beyond ~5 nm became increasingly difficult.	Quantum tunneling, heat dissipation, and fabrication costs.	Development of chiplets, 3D stacking, and quantum computing.
Renewable Energy (Solar)	Silicon solar cells plateaued at ~20–25% efficiency.	Shockley-Queisser limit and cost of advanced materials.	Emerging technologies like perovskite solar cells and tandem cells.
Battery Technology	Lithium-ion batteries plateaued at energy density (~300 Wh/kg).	Materials science constraints and safety issues.	Development of solid-state batteries and alternative chemistries.
Television Display Technology	LCD and OLED reached practical resolution and brightness limits.	Manufacturing cost and diminishing returns in visual quality.	Introduction of micro-LED and quantum dot technologies.

The limits of scaling laws for generative AI will eventually be overcome. But a plateau is not unexpected.