Gigabit Services are Right on Schedule According to Edholm's Law and Nielsen's Law

U.S. home broadband customers buying gigabit tiers of service grew 35 percent year over year in the third quarter of 2022, according to Openvault. At the moment, more than 15 percent of U.S. home broadband accounts use gigabit connections. 

Also, more than half of home broadband accounts buy service in the 200 Mbps to 400 Mbps range. That group grew 100 percent year over year. 

A little more than a year ago about half of households were buying service in the 100 Mbps to 200 Mbps range, showing that Nielsen’s Law and Edholm’s Law of bandwidth supply continue to operate. 

source: Openvault 

Edholm’s Law states that internet access bandwidth at the top end increases at about the same rate as Moore’s Law suggests computing power will increase. Nielsen's Law essentially is the same as Edholm’s Law, predicting an increase in the headline speed of about 50 percent per year. 

Nielsen's Law, like Edholm’s Law, suggests a headline speed of 10 Gbps will be commercially available by about 2025, so the commercial offering of 2-Gbps and 5-Gbps is right on the path to 10 Gbps. 

source: NCTA  

Headline speeds in the 100-Gbps range should be commercial sometime around 2030. 

How fast will the headline speed be in most countries by 2050? Terabits per second is the logical conclusion. Though the average or typical consumer does not buy the “fastest possible” tier of service, the steady growth of headline tier speed since the time of dial-up access is quite linear. 

Gigabit tier subscribers hit an inflection point last year. The rule of thumb is that any successful and widely-bought consumer technology enters its mass adoption phase when about 10 percent of homes are users. For U.S. gigabit adoption, that happened in 2021. 

Some might attribute the Covid pandemic and work from home as driving the change, but adoption rates would have taken off in 2021 in any case, as predicted by the 10-percent-of-homes adoption theory. 

It also is easy to predict that 2 Gbps to 4 Gbps is the next evolution, as speeds at the top end continue to increase by 50 percent a year. Ny 2025 we should start seeing the first 10-Gbps services deployed at scale.

How Much Can 5G Device Demand Decouple from Network Access?

One curious context for 5G introduction in at least some markets is that it has occurred in the context of unprecedented conditions created by the Covid-19 pandemic. A mobile network billed as providing “much faster speeds and bandwidth” is introduced precisely at a point when workers were forced to work from home and students forced to learn at home, are not as mobile as they once were, and so arguably derive less benefit from 5G speed advantages. 

That has implications for network connectivity demand, as people at home--workers or students--will routinely connect to Wi-Fi rather than using the mobile network. 

In other words, just as we are introducing a “much faster mobile network,” people have less need to be out and about where mobile phones provide their greatest value. 

What remains to be seen is what happens when the pandemic has ended. Many observers expect permanent changes in workforce deployment, with employees spending much more time working remotely, even when some amount of in-the-office work occurs. 

Others now speculate that fewer days of work per week also could happen, with possible four-day workweeks becoming more common. 

All of those trends could reduce demand for mobile connectivity overall and reduce it at some locations such as urban cores and commuting routes. Conversely, more mobile network demand could happen in suburban locations as workers spend more time closer to home.

And, of course, some amount of former mobile traffic will shift to the fixed network (using Wi-Fi). 

Less mission-critical mobility might have other repercussions. If mobiles do not have to be used as often “out and about,” perhaps a “faster network,” while providing advantages, does not supply as much value as if users were out and about--away from home--more often. 

The one exception might obviously be business travel, when the faster speeds are likely to be more important. But business travel remains at depressed levels, for most of us. And even after the pandemic, many question whether former levels will be matched soon. Some believe there will be a permanent downward shift in business travel. 

One bit of anecdotal evidence is my own behavior working from home (which, in fact, I have done for the better part of 30 years). Most of my mobile device connectivity now is on Wi-Fi. 

So relatively rarely do I move about outside the home, and infrequently enough, that I often leave my mobile radios turned off, knowing that I can survive a few minutes of driving with no connection before Wi-Fi kicks in at the location I am going to. 

Once 5G really does offer speeds up to 10 times faster than 4G, and when I am on business travel, 5G will supply lots of value. 

Day to day, working locally, the value will be low, as I have Wi-Fi fast enough to handle my untethered device use cases, or use a direct Ethernet connection for the PC. 

With the caveat that the online poll was not intended to be representative of all users, a survey by GSMArena suggests a certain amount of decoupling of demand for devices and networks, where 5G phones are used only on 4G networks, which is sort of the same point: devices are, to some extent, more decoupled from mobile network support than they used to be. 

Some 34 percent of respondents who use 5G phones say they do not use 5G because it is not yet available. And, with the caveat that behavior is likely to change once 5G is widely available, the poll still shows that demand for phones--and phone features--is to some extent possibly disconnected from the attributes of the network the device will use. 

Some popular consumer devices are designed to be used  independently from any mobile network, using Wi-Fi or Ethernet for connectivity, others are designed to use both 4G and 5G, with a default to 4G when 5G is not available. 

source: GSMArena 

But smartphones are only partly utilitarian devices. They also are fashion. Image and personas. So some 5G phone users have purchased 5G devices even in advance of 5G networks being available, which is a new behavior enabled by handset suppliers emphasizing device features other than 5G. 

The larger question is whether substantial percentages of 5G device owners continue to behave this way--owning 5G devices that do not connect to a 5G network--over the longer term. 

The same question might be asked for customers who do not yet think they “need 5G” or do not buy because it “costs more.” Over time, those objections should cease to be relevant. 

Still, the perceived value of 5G and faster speeds could shift if remote work becomes a permanent fixture and more people are able to rely on Wi-Fi for connectivity much of the time. 

Phone features and fashion demands will still exist, though, so some buyers might find they have appetite for 5G-capable devices even when they are not so convinced they need 5G services as much as they might once have thought they did. 

Value and price packages might eventually evolve to reflect that decoupling.

Why Some Users Find 5G Unsatisfying

5G value is an issue for some users who have bought it, especially in some markets where low-band spectrum has been the way 5G is mostly experienced. But there arguably are reasons why user experience could be challenged even in markets where mid-band spectrum underpins 5G experience.

One reason is the difference between what users do--and what the networks must support--on fixed and mobile networks. Fixed networks are multi-use networks. So the obvious value in a fixed network setting is "speed" or "bandwidth" to support multiple simultaneous users.

That is not the case on mobile networks, where accounts are set up on a one device, one user basis. Even when there are multiple users on a single account, those users do not "share" a local access connection. So the advantage of "speed" is different on a mobile network.

There is no "sharing" of a single connection. Also, fixed networks support screens of many sizes. Mobile networks mostly support very-small screen devices. That shapes bandwidth demand.

Apps typically used on large screen or medium-screen devices further shape bandwidth demand. Entertainment devices such as 4K TVs will consume more bandwidth than standard-definition or high-definition viewing on very-small screens.

Mobile-connected devices supporting artificial reality are the exception, at the moment, but also are relatively rare. And even many of those use cases rely on a local Wi-Fi connection, not the mobile network.

Up to a point, bandwidth affects user experience. Just as surely, additional bandwidth does not improve experience, once a threshold is reached. Latency and jitter also matter, but users might not be able to discern such changes, or wrongly attribute the lack of perceived improvement to "bandwidth" issues.

But if 4G provides any evidence, 5G value is going to change over the lifespan of the network. 

The initial value will be “speed,” even if user experience is less changed than some will expect, even if the perceived value is the marketing value of 5G delivering data faster, irrespective of user experience value.

The value after a decade will be “new use cases” and apps, for consumers and business use cases. But that will take time. And consumers might well find there is "not much difference" between 4G use cases and new 5G apps. They have not been created yet.

The betting early on is that many--perhaps most--of the new use cases will come from enterprise, not consumer uses. 

After a decade or so, we are likely to have discovered new consumer apps as well. It just is hard to say what those mass deployed use cases will be. Perhaps nobody predicted the emergence of ride sharing as an important 4G use case. 

Few predicted turn-by-turn navigation would be important. And though streaming video and audio were foreseen, even those apps do not rely so much on “speed” as the creation of easy-to-use and popular streaming apps.

In fact, the rise of “mobile-first” apps does not depend, strictly speaking, on bandwidth improvements brought by 4G, though faster speeds are an enabler. 

That would not be unusual for a next-generation mobile network, up to a point. If nothing else, coverage is an issue, early on. Even a better network does not help if it is not “generally available.”

Complicating matters is the rollout of 5G during the Covid pandemic and many restrictions on “out of home” and “on the go” usage. Working or learning remotely, many users likely spend most of their time connected to home Wi-Fi. So even if 5G is faster, the amount of time any single user might use it is far more limited than under normal circumstances. 

Still, faster speeds should help, up to a point, with existing applications, as page loading on a 600-Mbps fixed network connection should provide some noticeable advantages compared to a 300-Mbps connection (especially in multi-user and simultaneous multi-device usage cases. 

Since 3G, the key user experience gain has been “faster mobile data access.” Sometimes that is tangible; but sometimes not so much.

An argument can be made that latency has even greater user experience impact on a mobile network. Beyond some relatively low point, additional speed might not improve user experience. We can debate what that threshold is, as it changes over time. 

If a consumer’s primary reason for buying 4G was a tethering experience closer to fixed network experience, the 4G advantage was immediately tangible. If the primary advantage sought was mobile web browsing experience similar to fixed network experience, then the advantage might well have been tangible. 

5G poses a bit of a tougher problem. When downstream 4G speeds are routinely in the 20 Mbps to 30 Mbps to 35 Mbps range, how much does experience change when 5G offers 165 Mbps? It should help, but how much?

It depends on what a user does on a phone. Web page loading will be faster, but how much faster? Ignore for the moment the authoring of a web page (optimized for mobile access or not; how well optimized). 

For fixed network access, faster access speeds have not necessarily meant that web pages are loading faster, for example. 

On mobile networks, connection speeds have improved, but mobile page load times tracked by have increased, according to the Nielsen Norman Group.

source: Nieslen Norman Group 

Of course, page and landing page loading times are not a direct function of access speed but perhaps largely an artifact of remote server performance. So access speed is not the only, or perhaps not even primary determinant of user experience. 

The build-out phase of a national next-generation network takes years, so coverage outside of urban cores will typically be an issue. In some markets, where low-band and millimeter wave frequencies have been the mainstay, users might not often find there is much mobile data performance difference.

Only 28% of U.K. Customers Able to Buy FTTH Broadband Do So

Ofcom’s latest research shows the continuing lag between broadband supply and demand. In other words, it is one thing to make FTTH or gigabit-per-second internet access available. It is something else to entice customers to buy such services.

Fiber-to-home facilities now are available to more than eight million U.K. homes, or 28 percent of dwelling units. 

Meanwhile, gigabit-capable broadband is available to 13.7 million homes, or 47 percent of total homes. But take-up of gigabit speed services is still low, with around seven percent of FTTH  customers buying gigabit services, says Ofcom. 

source: Ofcom 

Fully 96 percent  of U.K. premises have access to 30 Mbps broadband connections. About 69 percent of locations able to buy 30 Mbps actually buy it, says Ofcom. Also, Ofcom notes that “94 percent of U.K. premises have access to an MNO (mobile network operator) FWA (fixed wireless access) service.” 

Mobile operators claim average download speeds up to 100 Mbps to 200 Mbps on their 5G fixed wireless services, Ofcom says. 

Satellite services add more potential coverage. “For example, Konnect states that its satellite covers around 75 percent of the U.K. and offers commercial services on a 24/7 basis direct to consumers with download speeds between 30 Mbps and 100 Mbps, with upload speeds averaging 3 Mbps.”

New low earth orbit satellite services such as Starlink also are coming. “Starlink indicates that users can currently expect to see 100 Mpbs to 200 Mbps or greater download speeds and upload speeds of 10 Mbps to 20 Mbpss with latency of 20 milliseconds or lower in most locations,” says Ofcom. 

The point is that although we might think consumers would jump at the chance to buy either FTTH service or gigabit-per-second service, that is not the case. Only about 28 percent of households able to buy FTTH service do so, while just seven percent of households able to buy gigabit service do so. 

To a large extent, internet service providers are investing ahead of demand, rather than following consumer demand. That is one key reason why customer experience did not fall off a cliff when pandemic-related shutdowns happened. ISPs already had created excess supply. 

That is likely to be the trend virtually forever.

Building Networks to Handle Video Protected Experience During Pandemic

As it turns out, building access networks meant to handle entertainment video and content has other benefits, such as protecting user experience when a sudden spike in usage happens. That was not expected, back in 2009, and seems to have been a major reason why global internet access networks did not crash during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Basically, ISPs and wide area network providers expect traffic to grow as much as 40 percent every year, and have built their networks to match. 

The other important change arguably is that lots of content, application and transaction platform firms build their own private global networks, which has the effect of adding much more capacity to the global network than would have been the case if the primary suppliers were telcos. 

In a serious pandemic, U.S. businesses, government agencies and schools could experience absenteeism (or forced dispersal of workers as precautionary measure) that could reach 50 percent or higher ranges, thereby displacing Internet access demand from normal daytime sites to homes, predicted a 2009 study by the Government Accountability Office.

The GAO expected residential internet access to be disrupted, as the networks are “not designed to handle this unexpected load.”

Of course, a pandemic did happen in 2020, did result in the shutdown of most of the economy, people did have to stay at home, away from school and work. But the feared internet access disruption never happened. 

In fact, the percentage of people required to stay at home vastly exceeded the 50 percent figure the GAO assumed. It was virtually 100 percent in most parts of the United States. But the networks proved resilient, in most parts of the globe, despite an immediate increase of internet access data volume between 30 percent and 45 percent. 

For the week of March 15 to March 21, 2020, as people were ordered to stay at home,  internet access services in 200 U.S. cities maintained service levels, though 13.5 percent of cities had seen average speed dips of 20 percent of typical ranges, according to Broadband Now. 

In late March and early April, consumer traffic was up possibly 30 percent to 40 percent in affected countries where stay at home policies were in effect. 

The reason seems to be that internet service providers have built their networks to handle ever-growing traffic volumes. Doing so meant they had headroom to handle the sudden traffic upsurge. It arguably also helped that today’s networks are built to handle video bandwidth as a routine matter. 

Video is the widely-used app that is most demanding of network bandwidth, and also drives nearly zero incremental revenue unless the ISP owns the content, which in the streaming era only applies to a few big ISPs. Even then, no ISP owns more than a fraction of all the streamed content. 

The point is that the networks must be built to handle video, and lots of it. A byproduct is that bandwidth to support work from home, email, VoIP, web content, database access and conferencing is, if not trivial, relatively easy. 

An earlier  2007 DHS study was said to “confirm that the increased traffic generated in neighborhoods during a severe pandemic is likely to exceed the capacity of the providers’ aggregation devices in metropolitan residential neighborhoods.” That has not proven to be the case. 

Notably, the GAO report said that at 40 percent of absenteeism (workers forced to stay home),  “at the 40 percent absenteeism level, the study predicted that most users within residential neighborhoods would likely experience congestion when attempting to use the Internet.” 

The Covid-19 pandemic caused close to 99 percent stay at home behavior. 

The point is that predictions always are hard to make. In this case, ISPs built robust networks that were able to handle the absolute worst case scenario for internet usage caused by a pandemic, with only a slight slowing of peak speeds. 

That is most welcome, given the dire predictions GAO issued. "Increased use of the Internet by students, teleworkers, and others during a severe pandemic is expected to create congestion in Internet access networks," GAO warned. That did not happen. 

"Localities may choose to close schools and these students, confined at home, will likely look to the Internet for entertainment, including downloading or 'streaming' videos, playing online games, and engaging in potential activities that may consume large amounts of network capacity.” That did happen, but the networks were able to handle the extra load. 

"Additionally, people who are ill or are caring for sick family members will be at home and could add to Internet traffic by accessing online sites for health, news, and other information," GAO added. That seems to have added so little additional strain it would be very hard to measure. 

"If theaters, sporting events, or other public gatherings are curtailed, use of the Internet for entertainment and information is likely to increase even more," GAO said. Indeed, people turned even more to reliance on streaming networks. 

But the networks had been built to handle that demand, so keeping up with relatively low-bandwidth work from home demand was not a problem.

Fixed Network Bandwidth Caps Might be Unnecessary, to Prevent Congestion

Many predictions prove quite false. Consider the 2009 study of pandemic impact on internet access by the U.S. General Accountability Office. That study warned that, in a serious pandemic, “increased demand during a severe pandemic could exceed the capacities of Internet providers’ access networks for residential users and interfere with teleworkers in the securities market and other sectors.”

Pointedly, the report said “DHS (Department of Homeland Security) has not developed a strategy to address potential Internet congestion.” As it turns out, internet service suppliers, in the normal course of supporting their businesses, built networks robust enough that measures to deal with internet congestion simply were not needed. 

It is worth noting that the report suggested “an influenza pandemic could result in 200,000 to 2 million deaths in the United States.” Though any loss of life is lamentable, that prediction has not proven close to correct. 

“Increased use of the Internet by students, teleworkers, and others during a severe pandemic is expected to create congestion in Internet access networks that serve metropolitan and other residential neighborhoods,” the report warned. 

Of course, a pandemic did happen in 2020, did result in the shutdown of most of the economy, people did have to stay at home, away from school and work. But the feared internet access disruption never happened. In fact, the percentage of people required to stay at home vastly exceeded the 50 percent figure the GAO assumed. It was virtually 100 percent in most parts of the United States. 

For the week of March 15 to March 21, 2020, as people were ordered to stay at home,  internet access services in 200 U.S. cities maintained service levels, though 13.5 percent of cities had seen average speed dips of 20 percent of typical ranges, according to Broadband Now. 

In late March and early April, consumer traffic was up possibly 30 percent to 40 percent in affected countries where stay at home policies were in effect. 

An earlier  2007 DHS study was said to “confirm that the increased traffic generated in neighborhoods during a severe pandemic is likely to exceed the capacity of the providers’ aggregation devices in metropolitan residential neighborhoods.” That has not proven to be the case. 

Notably, the GAO report said that at 40 percent of absenteeism (workers forced to stay home),  “at the 40 percent absenteeism level, the study predicted that most users within residential neighborhoods would likely experience congestion when attempting to use the Internet.” 

The Covid-19 pandemic caused close to 99 percent stay at home behavior. 

The point is that predictions always are hard to make. In this case, ISPs built robust networks that were able to handle the absolute worst case scenario for internet usage caused by a pandemic, with only a slight slowing of peak speeds. 

If nothing else, the stay-at-home orders put into place to combat the Covid-19 pandemic have stress-tested consumer internet access networks. 

That raises the question of whether data caps for fixed line services actually are necessary for the oft-stated reason of preserving quality of experience by reducing potential congestion. 

Most consumers seem to understand that mobile networks likely require more management, have less bandwidth and are more prone to actual congestion than fixed networks. At least that is what a Government Accountability Office survey might suggest. 

Fixed networks might be another matter. To be sure, use or non-use of usage caps is a business issue, not a technology issue. The pandemic performance pretty much confirms that. To wit, bandwidth caps are not needed, on today’s fixed networks, to prevent congestion. The consumer networks were able to handle the sudden and unexpected demand creating by nearly everyone staying away from work and school. 

The next question is whether a significant number of large ISPs will decide there is market advantage to be gained by dropping the bandwidth caps, increasing them substantially (it should not matter, in terms of congestion), or abandoning caps altogether. 

The performance of networks suggests it is technically safe to do so. The issue is whether business policies will change, or not.

Will the Digital Divide Always Exist? Will it Matter?

To get funding, any advocacy group must first demonstrate that a problem exists. To keep getting funds, an entity has to insist no progress is being made, necessitating continued funding. And if the original problem actually is solved, the entity has to find some new problem that needs to be solved. 

All that applies to “broadband access,” no less than any other undertaking we might consider worthwhile. Despite much data indicating that internet access (mobile and fixed) is getting substantially better and has held up very well as nationwide stay-at-home policies were put into place because of the Covid pandemic, not every community has been so fortunate. 

Oxnard, Calif., for example, was one such place, seeing a dip in downstream speeds of about 20 percent from mid-March to mid-April, although performance now is moving back up post-mid-April, according to BroadbandNow, using test data from M-Lab. 

The community where I live experienced a 32 percent dip in downstream speed during the same period. Those are the stats. 

What I can say in my own case is that the dip in top speed happened on a connection that normally runs (depending on hour of the weekday) between 130 Mbps and 200 Mbps. The dip was brief, lasting perhaps a week, and did not cause any actual degradation of user experience.

The point is that statistics are one thing; user experience can be quite another matter. The median pre-Covid speed was described as between 75 Mbps and 93 Mbps (half faster, half slower). 

Multi-user households buying lower-speed services might have experienced issues. That was not my own experience, but differences, gaps and disparities exist, and might continue to exist in the future, for all sorts of reasons. 

Consumers make choices. They might decide to buy more-affordable services that can be stressed in multi-user households. Some, in single-user households, might decide to rely on mobile access only. None of that is necessarily a failure of policy, but an expression of consumer choices, or demand. 

Supply is an issue, though. In many communities, though served by gigabit cable networks, telcos still sell digital subscriber line services that are demonstrably slower. 

Still, one analysis by Fastly suggests that even the most-challenged digital subscriber line networks in the United States held up under the new at-home load. Cable TV networks also have held up well.

source: Fastly

According to Ookla, U.S. internet access speeds  on fixed networks dipped about four percent during the pandemic. Mobile speeds actually improved by one percent. 

Most of you are familiar with speed tests. Most of you also know you test your connections primarily when they seem “slow.” Almost nobody bothers to test when the networks are humming along. 

And M-Lab tests have increased significantly during the stay-at-home policies, suggesting customers are aware of greater congestion or slower experienced speeds. 

That would hardly be surprising, as all studies show at-home internet access data volume has grown 40 percent or so as people have been forced to work and learn at home. 

A study by Fastly also indicates speed and income are related. That should not be surprising. Lots of consumer behaviors and spending patterns are correlated with income, education, wealth and geography. Up to 20 percent of U.S. consumers also say they rely on mobile internet access, and do not buy fixed network access. Rural speeds tend to be slower than urban speeds. Rural use of the internet, PC ownership and income also seem to be lower than in urban areas. 

The point is that there always will be room to argue that a digital divide continues to exist, even if it is narrowing and has been narrowing for a couple of decades. And statistics often too-casually dismiss the many nuances as speeds are improving fast. 

But differences might always exist.  Since networks are expensive, the last two percent of locations will always be an economic issue. We might solve the basic speed issue, improving delivery from 10 Mbps to 25 Mbps to some higher figure. But urban networks will keep improving as well, so a gap might always exist.

Some Problems Do Not Go Away, Even if They Become Less Important

To get funding, any advocacy group must first demonstrate that a problem exists. To keep getting funds, an entity has to insist no progress is being made, necessitating continued funding. And if the original problem actually is solved, the entity has to find some new problem that needs to be solved. 

All that applies to “broadband access,” no less than any other undertaking. Despite much data indicating that internet access (mobile and fixed). One analysis by Fastly suggests that even the most-challenged digital subscriber line networks in the United States held up under the new at-home load. Cable TV networks also have held up well.

According to Ookla, U.S. internet access speeds  on fixed networks dipped about four percent during the pandemic. Mobile speeds actually improved by one percent. 

)has held up very well as nationwide stay-at-home policies were put into place because of the Covid pandemic, not every community was so fortunate. Oxnard, Calif., for example, was one such place, seeing a dip in downstream speeds of about 20 percent from mid-March to mid-April, although performance now is moving back up post-mid-April, according to BroadbandNow, using test data from M-Lab. 

Most of you are familiar with speed tests. Most of you also know you test your connections primarily when they seem “slow.” Almost nobody bothers to test when the networks are humming along. And M-Lab tests have increased significantly during the stay-at-home policies, suggesting customers are aware of greater congestion or slower experienced speeds. That would hardly be surprising, as all studies show at-home internet access data volume has grown 40 percent or so as people have been forced to work and learn at home. 

A study by Fastly indicates speed and income are related. That should not be surprising. Lots of consumer behaviors and spending patterns are correlated with income, education, wealth and geography. Up to 20 percent of U.S. consumers also say they rely on mobile internet access, and do not buy fixed network access. Rural speeds tend to be slower than urban speeds. Rural use of the internet, PC ownership and income also seem to be lower than in urban areas. 

The point is that there always will be room to argue that a digital divide continues to exist, even if it is narrowing and has been narrowing for a couple of decades. And statistics often too-casually dismiss the many nuances as speeds are improving fast. 

But differences might always exist.  Since networks are expensive, the last two percent of locations will always be an economic issue.