OpenVault: Upstream broadband traffic grows three times faster than downloads
July 27, 2026 10.46 Europe/London By Julian Clover


Upstream broadband traffic grew more than three times faster than downstream usage during the second quarter of 2026, according to the latest OpenVault Broadband Insights (OVBI) report.

OpenVault found average upstream consumption increased 19.2% year-on-year to 58.2 GB per subscriber per month, compared with 6.1% growth in downstream traffic. The company said this continues a three-year trend of accelerating upload growth, driven by cloud services, connected devices and AI-enabled applications.

Average monthly broadband usage reached 711 GB per subscriber, up 7.1% from a year earlier, while median usage increased 11.8% to 482.3 GB, indicating that higher consumption is spreading across a broader range of users.

The report also found that the proportion of subscribers consuming more than 2 TB of data each month rose 16.1% year-on-year to 5.86%.

As upload demand continues to increase, the balance of network traffic is gradually shifting. OpenVault said the downstream-to-upstream traffic ratio has fallen from 16.6:1 in 2019 to 11.2:1, with upstream traffic now accounting for 8.2% of total broadband usage.

Fiber broadband customers continued to generate substantially more upload traffic than DOCSIS users, averaging 94.1 GB per month compared with 58.2 GB. Average DOCSIS upstream speeds also increased by 33.7% year-on-year to 47.8 Mbps.

OpenVault said the findings highlight the growing importance of upstream capacity as AI workloads, cloud synchronisation and always-connected devices generate increasing volumes of upload traffic, placing greater emphasis on network upgrades that improve return-path performance.