Tag Archives: OpenVault

The Myth of Cellphone-only Users

A recent survey by Pew Research shows that in 2025, 16% of Americans used a smartphone as their only source of broadband. The percentage has grown a bit over previous surveys. I’ve seen articles in the popular press that tout this, and similar surveys, as proof that young people find cellphones to be equivalent to home broadband. These articles imply that, as today’s youth become a bigger segment of the population, broadband will wane in popularity.

Anybody who is touting this idea didn’t take a very hard look at the Pew survey results. A deeper look at the survey results shows that the percentage of people relying on a cellphone as the only source of broadband varies by household income. 34% of people with household income under $30,000 use a cellphone as the only source of broadband, while only 4% of people with a household income over $100,000 choose a cellphone as the only source of broadband. The survey shows that as household income climbs, a greater percentage of households subscribe to broadband. It’s not hard to infer that most of those who live in homes with incomes under $30,000 would choose to buy home broadband if they could afford it.

This is not to say that there are not people who choose to use a cellphone as the only source of broadband. This might include people who are light broadband users and don’t need a lot of data per month. It’s likely that cellphone-only subscribers don’t watch much video or play games using a cellular data plan. But the survey suggests this might be something in the range of 4% of households.

It’s likely that a lot of the people who use a cellphone for broadband have access to WiFi from other broadband connections – at work, school, or other places that offer free WiFi access. We can infer this by comparing the average monthly data usage on cellphones versus home broadband connections.

OpenVault publishes statistics every quarter showing the average broadband usage for homes and small businesses. At the end of 2025, the average U.S. broadband customer used 767.4 gigabytes of data per month, which was 711.5 gigabytes of download data and 55.9 gigabytes of upload data. Average data usage has been climbing steadily every year, and the average household used 69 more gigabytes of data per month at the end of 2025 than they used at the end of 2024.

Contrast this with the average cellphone customer who consumes an average of around 23 gigabytes of cellular data per month from the cellular network. Cellphone plans don’t support the kind of data used by the average household, and most plans, even those touted as “unlimited”, are capped or have restricted speeds after reaching around 50 gigabytes of data usage in a month. The chances are high that the average cellphone user consumes a lot more data than the national average of 23 gigabytes per month, with the extra usage coming from connections to broadband-backed WiFi. Several recent surveys show that the average cell phone user in the country uses their cellphone for over 5 hours per day. They are not spending that much time connected to cellular data.

There are other reasons why a cellphone is not a substitute for a broadband connection. A cellphone data plan is not adequate to support a household with multiple broadband users. A cellphone data plan can’t support somebody working or schooling from home. Try writing a term paper or creating a complex spreadsheet on a cellphone. While a cellphone can be tethered to a computer or other device for these kinds of functions, most cellphone plans cap the amount of tethered usage to 20 gigabytes per month or less. The average home broadband connection uses more data in the average day than what most cellphone users consume from the cellular networks in a month.

The Pew survey demonstrates a strong relationship between income and broadband usage. A lot of people from low-income households choose a smartphone as the only source of broadband because they can’t afford both the cellphone and the home broadband connection. It’s fully understandable why somebody would choose a cellphone if they can only afford one connection. There is a lot of value in the mobility function of a smartphone that can provide voice and broadband from anywhere. But as household incomes rise, the Pew survey shows an increasing number of homes choose to buy both a smartphone and a broadband connection.

Broadband Usage in 4Q 2025

OpenVault recently published its Broadband Insights Report for the end of the fourth quarter of 2025. One of the most useful statistics from OpenVault is the average monthly broadband usage per household in gigabytes. Below is the trend in average monthly U.S. download and upload volumes since the third quarter of 2021. These averages include broadband used by residential and small business customers.The average U.S. broadband customer used 59 more downloaded gigabytes and 10 more uploaded gigabits per month than a year earlier. This growth means continued pressure on broadband networks because if we assume roughly 120 million broadband subscribers nationwide, this growth means over 8.3 billion more gigabytes of data cross the Internet than a year earlier.

As can be seen in the table above, upload usage has been growing at a faster pace than download usage. In a recent quarterly report, OpenVault credited the growth of upload usage to the increasing usage of video calls, cloud backup, IoT uplinks, and similar uses. To put the 10-gigabyte increase in average upload into context, it’s the equivalent of every household uploading an additional 7 standard definition movie files or 3 high definition movie files every month compared to a year earlier. I think the average household would be surprised by the volume of data they are uploading each month.

The report made an interesting comparison between HFC technology and fiber for an unnamed cable company. When comparing customers that subscribed to equivalent fast download speeds, the average customer using cable technology uploaded 58 gigabytes, while the average fiber customer uploaded 93 gigabytes. Clearly, the slow upload speeds on cable (an average of 17.3 Mbps) are restricting uploading compared to fiber customers with symmetrical data plans.

Another interesting statistic is the percentage of U.S. subscribers at different speed tiers. For the last several years, there has been a steady migration of subscribers from slower speed tiers to the fastest tiers, and there is continued erosion in customers subscribing to speeds under 100 Mbps. What’s most interesting about the two years is a big jump in subscribers in the 200-499 Mbps tier and a decrease in subscribers buying speeds faster than 500 Mbps. My best guess is that this is reflecting the continued migration of millions of homes to FWA wireless. Those households seem to be willing to accept slower speeds as a trade-off for the lower prices.

One thing this table demonstrates is the absurdity of the FCC’s current definition of broadband at 100/20 Mbps. At the end of 2025, 87.4% of U.S. broadband subscribers are buying a product with speeds of 200 Mbps download or faster.

OpenVault always includes other interesting statistics in its quarterly reports:

  • The annual average increase in usage is growing over time. In 2022, households used 50 gigabytes more than the previous year. That’s increased to 54 GB in 2023, 57 GB in 2024, and 69 GB in 2025.
  • Super Power Users (those that use more than 2 terabytes of data per month grew by 22.5% in 2025, to become 7.4% of all households.

Median usage grew from 461.2 GB in 2024 to 531.8 GB in 2025. The median is the number where 50% of customers use less and 50% use more. That’s an increase of 15.3%, which is a faster growth rate than for average usage (9.9%). OpenVault credits the faster increase in median speeds to faster growth than average for customers with smaller monthly usage.

Broadband Usage 3Q 2025

OpenVault recently published its Broadband Insights Report for the end of the third quarter of 2025. OpenVault is documenting the continued growth in broadband usage by U.S. households.

One of the most useful statistics from OpenVault is the average monthly broadband usage per household in gigabytes. Below is the trend in average monthly U.S. download and upload volumes since the third quarter of 2021. These averages include broadband used by residential and small business customers.The average U.S. broadband customer used 43 more downloaded gigabytes and 7 more uploaded gigabits per month than a year earlier. This growth means continued pressure on broadband networks because if we assume roughly 120 million broadband subscribers nationwide, this growth means over 6 billion more gigabytes of data are used each month than a year earlier.

One of the most interesting things about the second quarter this year is that the overall average broadband usage was lower than the second quarter, something that hasn’t happened since 2019.

As can be seen in the table above, upload usage has been growing at a faster pace than download usage. In a recent quarterly report, OpenVault credited the growth of upload usage to the increasing usage of video calls, cloud backup, IoT uplinks, and similar uses. To put the 7-gigabyte increase in average upload into context, it’s the equivalent of every household uploading an additional 5 standard definition movie files or 2 high definition movie files every month compared to a year earlier. I think the average household would be surprised by the volume of data they are uploading each month.

Another interesting statistic is the percentage of U.S. subscribers at different speed tiers. For the last several years, there has been a steady migration of subscribers from slow speed tiers to the fastest tiers. The current report documents a big jump in subscribers in the 200-499 Mbps tier and a decrease in the 500-999 Mbps and the 1 Gbps+ tiers. I have to wonder is this is the impact of millions of homes migrating from cable broadband to FWA wireless. Customers seem to be making the change to get a substantially lower price and seem willing to sacrifice speed for price. We’ll have to see how this trend continues, but it’s the first break in the upward increase in the fastest speed tiers.

OpenVault always includes other interesting statistics in its quarterly reports:

  • 39% of Gen Alpha teens spend over three hours a day gaming, and only 30% of this age group watches TV, and only 28% listen to music or podcasts. Over time, this could mean a huge shift in the demand for traditional entertainment.
  • 89% of U.S. households now subscribe to at least one streaming service, which is very close to the percentage of homes that have broadband.
  • While average usage dropped a bit from the second to the third quarter, the median household usage increased from 431.4 GB to 438.9 GB.

Broadband Usage 2Q 2025

OpenVault recently published its Broadband Insights Report for the end of the second quarter of 2025. OpenVault is documenting the continued growth in broadband usage by U.S. households.

One of the most useful statistics from OpenVault is the average monthly broadband usage per household in gigabytes. Below is the trend in average monthly U.S. download and upload volumes since the first quarter of 2021. These averages include broadband used by residential and small business customers.The average U.S. broadband customer used 71 more downloaded gigabytes and over 7 more uploaded gigabits per month than a year earlier. This growth means continued pressure on broadband networks because if we assume roughly 120 million broadband subscribers nationwide, this growth means over 9.4 billion more gigabytes of data are used each month than a year earlier.

One of the most interesting things about the second quarter this year is that the overall average broadband usage was slightly higher than in the first quarter. Except for the COVID year of 2020, OpenVault has always documented a seasonal drop in usage from the first to second quarter. That’s mostly due to the OpenVault numbers being measured at the end of each quarter, and schools being out in June. But this year, there was no drop off. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues and if it represents an unexpected growth of bandwidth usage compared to recent years.

As can be seen in the table above, upload usage has been growing at a faster pace than download usage. In its previous quarterly report, OpenVault credited the 18% growth of upload usage to the increasing usage of video calls, cloud backup, IoT uplinks, and similar uses. To put the 7-gigabyte increase in average upload into context, it’s the equivalent of every household uploading an additional 5 standard definition movie files or 2 high definition movie files every month compared to a year earlier. I think the average household would be surprised by the volume of data they are uploading each month.

This report included something new, and OpenVault looked at the performance nationwide of broadband cable modems. Their findings go a long way towards explaining why a lot of customers complain about broadband performance. OpenVault shows that 13% of all broadband modems are experiencing problems. The report showed that:

  • 47% of modems were critical, meaning they are significantly impaired and don’t work as intended.
  • 95% of all modems experience moderate impairment.
  • 67% of modems have no usage on at least one upload or download channel, meaning degraded performance.
  • 99% of modems were described as flapping, meaning they go in and out of service.

OpenVault always includes other interesting statistics in its quarterly reports:

  • 5% of broadband subscribers now use more than 2 terabytes of data per month.
  • Median broadband speeds are also increasing and were at 431 gigabytes at the end of the second quarter. That means half of homes use less than 431 gigabytes and half of homes use more.

Will FWA Run Out of Gas?

You probably haven’t noticed, but the press is no longer full of articles claiming that FWA cellular broadband is a poor broadband choice for customers. For several years, there was a constant stream of quotes by executives of big cable companies and telcos saying that FWA was a flash in the pan that was only selling quickly because of low prices. They said that FWA performance was erratic and cellular carriers didn’t have enough excess capacity to provide a reliable broadband connection. There were many predictions made that FWA would plateau as word of mouth spread that FWA performance was substandard.

But that plateau hasn’t happened. As you can see in the table below, the recent quarterly growth of FWA has held steady for each of the three major FWA providers. Below the FWA numbers are the overall net new customers of the publicly traded cable companies and telcos. The big telcos have finally turned the corner and are installing more fiber customers than they are disconnecting DSL. All of the big cable companies are losing customers each quarter. Not reflected in these numbers are customers being added by fiber overbuilders, and the growth of fixed wireless and satellite broadband. Even considering the growth of the industry not shown on the table, it’s clear that FWA cellular is still dominating the broadband industry in terms of customer acquisition. FWA cellular will eventually plateau, but it doesn’t look like we are close to that day yet. The FWA carriers got a recent burst when Congress gave the FCC authority to renew spectrum auctions and to consider allocating as much as 800 megahertz of spectrum for 5G usage over the next five years. Leading up to that legislation, cellular carriers had started to beat the “we’re out of spectrum’ drum and claiming that the U.S. was losing the 5G battle to China. That argument worked in the past and seemingly has worked again.

I have to think that a big part of the hope for new spectrum is to support FWA. There is a huge usage difference between a normal cellphone customer and an FWA customer. Various industry statistics show that the average cellphone customer uses a little over 20 gigabytes of data per month, while OpenVault says that the average home broadband customer used 663 gigabytes per month at the end of the first quarter of 2025. Not only do FWA customers use thirty times more data than a cellphone customer, they use it in a very different way, with home and work computers connected to broadband for hours on end, while cellphone data usage tends to happen in shorter bursts.

The cable companies and telcos were not wrong when they said that cell towers weren’t originally designed to do home broadband, but with over 13.4 million FWA customers, it’s clear that the cell carriers have figured out a way to make it work. The one glaring weakness of FWA is that carriers will still cut FWA speeds to near zero any time that a cell site gets too busy – carriers are going to continue to prioritize cell customers over FWA customers. But the carriers are considering dedicating spectrum just for FWA, which would eliminate this issue. That will be a lot easier to do after more spectrum comes onto the market.

I’ve always followed predictions of where the broadband industry is headed. A decade ago, there were zero predictions that cellular carriers would capture a significant portion of the home broadband market. Cell carriers have offered cellular hot spots for many years, but the products weren’t popular because of slow speeds and high prices, with most hotspot plans with monthly data caps nearly identical to cellphones.

Verizon recently said it has a goal of reaching 8-9 million FWA customers by 2030. T-Mobile has a more aggressive plan to reach 12 million customers by the end of 2028. The industry segment is far from running out of gas.

Broadband Usage 1Q 2025

OpenVault recently published its Broadband Insights Report for the end of the first quarter of 2025. OpenVault is documenting the continued growth in broadband usage by U.S. households.

One of the most useful statistics from OpenVault is the average monthly broadband usage per customers in gigabytes. Below is the trend in average monthly U.S. download and upload volumes since the first quarter of 2021. These averages include broadband used by residential and small business customers.The average U.S. broadband customer used 50 more downloaded gigabytes and 7 more uploaded gigabits per month than a year earlier. The interesting trend to note is that average download usage has grown roughly 50 gigabits each year since 2021.

This growth means continued pressure on broadband networks because if we assume roughly 120 million broadband subscribers nationwide, this growth means over 6.9 billion more gigabytes of data used each month than a year earlier.

The report this quarter concentrated on the growth of upload usage. As can be seen in the table above, the rate of growth of average upload usage grew at 8% in 2022, with the rate of growth increasing each year. OpenVault credits the 18% growth of upload usage between 2024 and 2025 to the increasing usage of video calls, cloud backup, IoT uplinks, and similar uses.

This growth in upload usage highlights the increasing value in having adequate upload speeds for both residences and businesses. To put the 7-gigabyte increase in average upload into context, it’s the equivalent of every household uploading 5 standard definition movie files or 2 high definition movie files every month. I think the average household would be surprised about how much data they are uploading.

Another interesting statistic from OpenVault is the change over time in broadband subscriptions. For years, the trend has been growth in the percentage of broadband customers subscribing to faster speeds. The following table documents a big increase in the percentage of people from 2024 and 2025 subscribing to speeds faster than 500 Mbps. The big shift in the last year is customers upgrading to speeds of at least 500 Mbps. OpenVault always includes other interesting statistics in its quarterly reports:

  • 9% of broadband subscribers now use more than 2 terabytes of data per month. 0.16% of homes now use more than 5 terabytes per month.
  • Business peak usage has been growing at a faster rate than residential usage. The peak usage measures the busiest hour of the day. Business peak upload usage grew 103%, and peak download by 105% since 2021. During that same time, residential peak upload grew 76%, and peak download by 59%.

Broadband Usage 4Q 2024

OpenVault recently published its Broadband Insights Report for the end of the fourth quarter of 2024. OpenVault is documenting the continued growth in broadband usage by U.S. households.

I think one of the most useful statistics from OpenVault is the average monthly broadband usage per customers in gigabytes. Below is the trend in average monthly U.S. download and upload volumes since the fourth quarter of 2020. These are the average amount of data used combined for all residential and small business customers.

The average U.S. broadband customer used 51 more downloaded gigabytes and 6 more uploaded gigabytes per month than a year earlier. The interesting trend to note is that average download usage has grown roughly 50 gigabits each year since 2020.

This growth means continued pressure on broadband networks because if we assume roughly 120 million broadband subscribers nationwide, this means over 5.2 billion more gigabytes of data used each month than a year earlier.

The growth in what OpenVault calls power users is even more dramatic than overall bandwidth growth. Below is the percentage of broadband customers who use more than 1 terabyte of data per month and those using more than 2 terabytes. These numbers show the potential harm created when ISPs place data caps on monthly usage.OpenVault always includes other interesting statistics in its quarterly reports:

  • Median household broadband usage was 461.2 gigabytes – half of homes use more broadband than the median, and half use less. The gap between the median and average usage is explained by the large number of power users.
  • The report includes an interesting graph showing the nationwide broadband usage on Christmas, which is the busiest broadband day each year. The comparison between 2020, 2022, and 2024 is dramatic.

Broadband Usage 3Q 2024

OpenVault recently published its Broadband Insights Report for the end of the third quarter of 2024. OpenVault is documenting the continued growth in broadband usage by U.S. households.

I think one of the most useful statistics from OpenVault is the average monthly broadband usage per customers in gigabytes. Below is the trend in average monthly U.S. download and upload volumes since the third quarter of 2020. These are the average amount of data used combined for all residential and small business customers. Over the last four years the average monthly download and upload usage has increased roughly 53%.

The average U.S. broadband customer used 35 more downloaded gigabytes and 5 uploaded gigabits per month than a year earlier. This means continued pressure on broadband networks because if we assume roughly 120 million broadband subscribers, this equates to over 4.8 billion more gigabytes of data used each month than a year earlier.

This table raises an interesting question if the growth in broadband usage is slowing down. It would be rash to draw that conclusion by only comparing the third quarters of 2023 and 2024, but a slowdown would be obvious over the next several quarters.

The growth in what OpenVault calls power users is even more dramatic than overall bandwidth growth. Below is the percentage of broadband customers who use more than 1 terabyte of data per month and those using more than 2 terabytes. These numbers show the potential harm created when ISPs place data caps on monthly usage.OpenVault always includes other interesting statistics in its quarterly reports:

  • The report shows that the average rural customer uses only slightly less average broadband than urban households.
  • Median household broadband usage was 389.3 gigabytes – half of homes use more broadband than the median, and half use less. The higher overall average is explained by the large number of power users.

The report includes a section that shows there is no longer a strong correlation between household incomes and data consumption as was seen in past years. Interestingly, in the third quarter, the group with the highest average download usage was households with incomes under $50,000.

 

Heavy Broadband Users

One of the most interesting statistics coming out of the latest OpenVault Broadband Insight Report for the second Quarter of 2024 is that the percentage of customers using a terabyte of data each month continues to grow. OpenVault predicts that more than 20% of households will be surpassing a terabyte of data soon.

The following table shows the growth in what OpenVault calls power users – those that use more than 1 terabyte of data per month. The 2 terabyte customers are also included in the first column numbers. There was a one time burst of new terabyte users during the pandemic like there was with overall broadband usage, but the growth has continued since then.One issue with so many terabyte users is there must be a lot of homes paying extra for broadband because of data caps. That is where an ISP charges more for usage over some predetermined amount. Most landline ISPs now offer unlimited data usage – but not all. Comcast has a 1.2 terabyte monthly data cap that it only enforces in some markets. Cox has a monthly data cap of 1.28 terabytes. Mediacom has data caps that range from 350 gigabytes to 1 terabyte for its various products. Sparklight has a 700 gigabyte data cap on some products but unlimited on more expensive ones.

I recall in the early days of broadband that the vast majority of ISPs worried about large broadband users. This was largely due to the technology in use at the time. For example, I know many early fiber ISPs had deployed BPON that delivered 622 Mbps download and 155 Mbps upload to a neighborhood node of around 322 homes. A few large data users in the same node could cause noticeable problems for their neighbors. Cable companies that deployed DOCSIS 3.0 technology had even more problems since they often had 200 or more customers sharing the same node. Since then, most cable companies have split their nodes and reduced the number of homes sharing the same data connection.

I remember working with a number of ISPs that wanted to know what to do about heavy broadband users. I recall clients who had customers in residential neighborhoods who operated music file-sharing servers, and in one case, a pornography server. ISPs worried about people who operated early successful retail servers. I recall a customer who generated a huge amount of traffic to support a chat line service – something the FCC eventually frowned on. More recently, one of my clients had an unusually large number of customers operating bitcoin servers since the ISP operates in an area with cheap hydropower electricity.

In almost every case, the ISPs decided to invite heavy users to upgrade to a business service, with the extra payments helping to fund setting up an extra node. In a few cases, the ISPs ended up disconnecting customers they deemed were harming the network. This was always a gray legal area, and every ISP who did this struggled with the decision.

This is less of an issue today with more robust networks. Fiber ISPs now usually have the option to serve a few customers in each node with active Ethernet to segregate them from other customers. I’ve always wondered how the big cable companies handle this – it’s not something I’ve ever heard them discuss.

OpenVault says there is now a growing number of customers who use more than 5 terabytes of data per month. They didn’t cite the percentage, but anybody using that much broadband is tying up a lot of node resources. And I’m sure there are some customers using far more than 5 terabytes. I still think it’s a valid question to consider if somebody who regularly using that that much data is really operating a business and should pay business rates.

Broadband Usage 2Q 2024

OpenVault recently published its Broadband Insights Report for the end of the second quarter of 2024. As usual, OpenVault is documenting the continued growth in broadband usage by U.S. households.

I think one of the most useful statistics from OpenVault is the average monthly broadband usage per customers in gigabytes. Below is the trend in average monthly U.S. download and upload volumes since the second quarter of 2020. These are the average amount of data used combined for all residential and small business customers. In the four years, average monthly download usage has increased 52% while average upload usage has increased by 80%.

The average U.S. broadband customer used 46.3 more downloaded gigabytes and 5.4 uploaded gigabits per month than a year earlier. This means continued pressure on broadband networks because if we assume roughly 120 million broadband subscribers, this equates to over 6.2 billion more gigabytes of data used each month than a year earlier.

The growth in what OpenVault calls power users is even more dramatic than overall bandwidth growth. Below are the percentage of broadband customers who use more than 1 terabyte of data per month and those using more than 2 terabytes. OpenVault predicts that more than 20% of all customers will use more than a terabyte per month by the end of this year. These numbers show the potential harm created when ISPs place data caps on monthly usage.

OpenVault always includes other interesting statistics in its quarterly reports:

  • The percentage of subscribers purchasing speeds lower than 400 Mbps is now down to 41% of all customers, a 33% decrease over the last year.
  • Median household broadband usage was 382.6 gigabytes – half of homes use more broadband than the median, and half use less.
  • The report includes a section that shows there is no longer a strong correlation between faster speeds and higher data consumption as was seen in past years. OpenVault looked at 15 different ISPs in detail and found that the average monthly downstream consumption was similar for ISPs with average speeds between 100 Mbps and 700 Mbps.