The FCC recently asked for comments in Docket 26-78, which is the latest iteration of its biennial report to Congress that looks at the State of Competition in the Communications Marketplace. Various industry players provided input to the FCC on issues related to competition and pricing for broadband and cellular service, with fewer caring about voice and cable service.
One of the issues widely discussed in this year’s filing is broadband prices. Some of the big ISPs continue to assert that broadband prices are dropping. For example, USTelecom refers to a report it generated that asserts that Internet prices have fallen for the eleventh straight year. I’ve written about the annual USTelecom reports before, and a big part of their assertion comes from looking at the price over time of the cost per megabit of speed being sold. On that basis, prices are dropping, mostly because ISPs have been increasing the speeds being delivered at a faster pace than prices.
One set of comments came from the Benton Institute, which described the issue perfectly. They cite the example that the price for 200 Mbps was around $50 in 2021. Many ISPs have unilaterally increased speeds without increasing price, and the average price for 400 Mbps in 2025 was also around $50. While the cost per megabit cut in half, customers are still paying $50.
Of course, ISPs don’t sell, and consumers don’t buy broadband by the megabit. Benton made a humorous observation on the big ISP’s focus on cost per megabit. Benton cites a USTelecom comment that the price per megabit for gigabit service is around 7 cents per megabit, or $70 per month. If USTelecom members are happy with that price, then why aren’t they applying that price to slower products so that 200 Mbps would cost $14 per month?
Perhaps the best discussion of prices in the docket comes from a study by John P. Horrigan, PhD, which is attached to the Benton comments. Horrigan takes a neutral look at prices and found that the weighted average for all broadband products increased by 4.8% from 2024 to 2025. Horrigan found that broadband prices for products slower than gigabit declined 8.5% from 2024 to 2025, with prices increasing for faster products.
Horrigan found that low-price options are disappearing from the market. When the ACP plan was operating, 9% pf broadband being sold was priced at $30 or less. He says this fell to just 3% of the market in 2025. This also holds true for plans with slower speeds. In 2022, 57% of consumers were buying Internet at a speed of 100 Mbps or less. In 2025, that has dropped to 32% of the market.
While the Benton Institute comments hint at it, I think most other comments in the docket are missing the bigger picture. Customers are choosing to migrate to lower-cost broadband options. One doesn’t have to look any further than the phenomenal success of FWA cellular. Since 2022, 16.5 million customers have subscribed to FWA cellular. While some of these customers live in rural areas where FWA is the only fast broadband option, I think a vast majority of these folks choose FWA to save money. The list prices for FWA home broadband are in the $50-$60 dollar range. However, there are big discounts for bundling with cellular service and for using autopay, and it’s possible to buy FWA home broadband for as little as $20-$30 per month.
Any analysis that just looks at prices for specific speeds over time will account for folks willing to take less speed for a lower bill. The big ISPs don’t want to talk about this, but there is no other way to discuss the huge success of FWA without talking about customers self-selecting lower prices.
Yeah the FWA companies are playing nasty games right now. I’ve heard of, but have not personally experienced, instances where they give you a choice of seeing an increase on your monthly cellular contract or opt to get their FWA service and the combo price is lower than if you don’t get the FWA. If that is in fact true, then any studies done on pricing are irrelevant.
The race to the bottom, influenced strongly by government funds, is an absolute trainwreck.
The government doesn’t run these networks, there’s no beurocracy in place to keep them working. As inefficient as government is, at least they do put things on maintenance schedules etc.
These are fast and loose buildouts to win market share and undercut capable rivals.
The price of broadband everywhere in the nation is a fraction of peoples cigarette or vape budget. They spend more on coke zero in a month than they do internet.
This is not capitalism, which has mechanisms to offer the lowest FUNCTIONAL price. The free government money breaks this, the mechanism for ‘functional’ is broken. That means sustainability is reduced. Resilience is reduced. All because able competitors cannot compete and find that appropriate price range for selling the product and maintaining and growing the network. building into communities can then only happen when the government pushes it, to those that race to the bottom to gobble up the market.
We are only in this situation because the last time this happened, the copper/DSL providers had long term monopolies. The cable companies only upgraded when there was pressure from competition. The cable companies shot themselves in the foot selling (overselling) services at incredible ratios and not being pressured to upgrade so when streaming video hit hard then crumbled.
Quit harping on ‘broadband prices’ when they are already increadibly low compared to incomes in those places, and America is one of the most demanding broadband markets because Americans stream more than anywhere else. oversells and ‘tricks’ to make services cheaper don’t work as well here, costs are higher, labor is higher, the race to the bottom is destroying this industry and we will be left with crumbling services in the coming decades and require government bailout. It’s all bad.
Most ISPs can make a comfortable living on 50-100 plans for typical homes and the price really shouldn’t drop much below that for a health market.
As an ISP owner: nail on head. Even with FWAng $30-40/mo plans aren’t sustainable. The expectation to constantly increase speeds and lower costs at the same time is absolutely going to cross a sustainability line (If it hasn’t already).