Broadband super power usage surge drives data explosion
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Editor
| 09 June 2022
Rising adoption of higher-speed broadband packages is accelerating the number of “super power user” subscribers who consume more than two terabytes (2 TB) of bandwidth per month, according to OpenVault’s Broadband Insights report for the first quarter of 2022.
Openreach network 18Nov2021
The report from the network improvement solutions provider found that with the number of subscribers provisioned at speeds of 500Mbps or more per month approaching 20% – and with more than 13% of subscribers on gigabit speed plans – the super power user category experienced year-over-year growth of 31% in Q122. This was more than 72% faster than the 18% growth for “power users” of 1 TB or more during the same period. The annual percentage growth of super power users among operators employing usage-based billing (UBB) was 44%, double the 22% in flat-rate billing systems.

OpenVault cites subscriber migration to higher cost unlimited usage plans in UBB systems as a key driver of this trend: In Q122, UBB networks had 27% more gigabit speed tier subscribers than FRB networks; and in one operator example, unlimited usage gigabit subscribers on average consumed 2.3x the data of usage quota subscribers and close to 3x the upstream data.

For the second straight quarter, average usage topped half a terabyte, with monthly consumption in Q122 at 513.8 GB, up 11.3% from the 1Q21 average of 461.7 GB. The 14.1% annual usage growth on FRB networks, to 545.9 GB, continued to outpace growth of UBB networks (10.3%, to 501.5 GB), highlighting UBB’s ability to better manage the rate of subscriber usage growth.

In a classic example of surging demand, during the NCAA March Madness College Basketball Championship game between Kansas and Duke on 4 April 2022, network operators in the state of Kansas experienced a 24% spike in bandwidth usage at 10 p.m., the height of the game, over the previous three weeks.

“Having more gigabit subscribers on a network means more revenue, but it also means more data usage,” the report notes. “But while UBB operators are seeing faster growth for power users and greater gigabit speed tier adoption, UBB networks are still better positioned to manage overall network traffic, with less bandwidth consumption across all subscribers on average, when compared to FRB networks.”

The Broadband Insights report for Q1 2022 also noted that as subscribers migrated to higher speed tiers, the number of subscribers with speeds of 200Mbps or slower declined almost 90% during the past year.