OpenVault recently published its Broadband Insights Report for the second quarter of 2020. Since OpenVault’s software is used to track usage in major Internet POPs, the company has a unique perspective on broadband usage in the country.

The report says that the peak of data usage this year was in March when people first reacted to the pandemic. Data usage is down slightly compared with the first quarter, but still much higher than data usage a year ago, In the second quarter the average home used 380 gigabytes of data per month. This is down 6% compared to the average usage in March 2020 of 403 gigabytes. But the second quarter data usage is up 36% over the average usage of 280 gigabytes per household used in the second quarter of 2019. Before the pandemic, household broadband usage was growing at a rate just above 20% annually, so the 36% growth in a year demonstrates the huge impact on the pandemic on broadband.

Median data usage has increased even faster than average usage. The median usage measures the middle point where half of homes use less and have of homes use more broadband. The median usage in the second quarter of 2019 was 144 gigabytes and has grown 54% in a year to 223 gigabytes. This indicates that even households that previously would have been light data users are now using a lot more data during the pandemic. This likely can comes from both increase cord-cutting as well as from students and adults working from home.

OpenVault reports that usage for homes with unlimited broadband plans (no data caps) grew even faster and increased by 42% over 2019. The company surmises that the big increase is at least partially because the big ISPs are not enforcing data caps during the pandemic. However, part of this increase is also likely due to an increase of what OpenVault calls power users. These are homes that use more than 1 terabyte of data per month.

In the second quarter 8.7% of homes used at least 1 terabyte of data per month, more than double the 4.1% of terabyte homes a year earlier. This now includes 1% of all homes that are using more than 2 terabytes of data, triple since a year earlier in 2019.

One reason for the higher data usage might be explained by households subscribing to faster data plans. At the end of the second quarter, 4.9% of homes are now subscribed to gigabit data speeds, more than double the 2.1% of gigabit subscribed in the second quarter of 2019. Over 61% of homes in the country are now subscribed to broadband speeds greater than 100 Mbps. That includes 37.8% subscribed to plans between 100 Mbps and 200 Mbps, 13.5% subscribed to plans between 200 Mbps and 400 Mbps, 5% subscribed to speeds between 400 Mbps and 900 Mbps, and 4.9% subscribed to gigabit speeds. Less than 20% of homes nationwide are subscribed to plans slower than 40 Mbps.

There is one segment of broadband usage that continued to increase in the second quarter of 2020. Upload usage from homes is up 56% over a year earlier. Upload demand is directly related to the need to connect for homes to connect to school and work servers and to take part in Zoom and other video conferencing services. It’s likely before the pandemic that many homes had never much needed the upload link from home.

What is most intriguing about the continued increase in upload demand is that upload usage continued to grow even after school semesters were ending for the year. During the second quarter tens of millions of upload links to school servers would have gone quiet as school semesters ended, and yet upload demand continued to grow. It’s going to be interesting to see what the fall school semester does to broadband usage.