Tag Archives: upload usage

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.

The Growth of Upload Usage

I’ve written a number of blogs about the growth of download broadband usage. I recently looked at the growth trend for upload broadband usage and found that upload usage has been growing faster than download usage.

The statistics in the following table come from OpenVault, which has been tracking broadband usage statistics each quarter. The numbers represent the national average monthly usage of broadband for households at the end of the second quarter of each year until before the pandemic. Just like with download usage, there was a big burst in upload usage at the onset of the pandemic as people were sent home. People instantly needed upload links to communicate back to the office or the school. But even since the pandemic, the overall trend shows upload usage growing faster overall than download usage.

Upload Annual Download Annual
Mbps Growth Mbps Growth
2Q 2019 15 265
2Q 2020 23 56% 357 35%
2Q 2021 28 22% 405 13%
2Q 2022 31 11% 460 14%
2Q 2023 36 15% 498 8%

There are a lot of possible explanations for the growth of upload usage:

  • The pandemic trained the whole country to communicate by video conference. This has grown to become a routine practice. I use video conferencing at least a few hours per day, and often a lot more.
  • Over the last five years, a lot of the routine software we use migrated to the cloud. As a common example, Microsoft Office 365 has migrated the Microsoft suite of products to store and save in the cloud. Opening or modifying spreadsheets, Word Documents, or PowerPoints now uses upload bandwidth.
  • There is also widespread use today of collaboration software where multiple people can work on documents, spreadsheets, and graphics at the same time.
  • It’s hard to imagine anybody with a lot of files that doesn’t back them up in Dropbox or the many other storage systems.
  • There is a lot of hidden machine-to-machine traffic where software automatically and routinely connects to the outside world. A few years ago, a Washington Post reporter left his computer running during a month-long vacation and found that his home had generated almost a gigabyte of upload traffic in his absence.
  • It’s now a video-driven world, and people share videos as easily as we used to share pictures.
  • A major portion of gaming has moved to the cloud.
  • We are using a lot more security cameras. There has been a proliferation of doorbell cameras installed as well as inside cameras to check on pets, kids, and babysitters. People routinely check the cameras remotely.

It seems unlikely that upload usage will ever catch up to download usage for most homes. Most people consume more video and other content than they generate. But the volume of average upload usage is still significant. I doubt that anybody a decade ago would have predicted that the average U.S. home would be uploading 36 gigabytes each month.

There doesn’t seem to be any reason on the horizon why the growth won’t continue. More people are sharing videos and other content. We’re slowly creeping towards having early versions of telepresence and virtual reality, which will likely mean a huge bump up in upload usage for many homes. Does anybody care to make a prediction of the average amount of upload usage a decade from now?