The OpenVault Broadband Insights report for Q3 2023 identifies a new category of extreme power users who consume more than 5 TB of broadband data per month. More than 7% of this group are on 100 Mbps or slower speed plans. All of them pose a capacity challenge.
The report warns that the heavy usage patterns of the extreme users, particularly in the upstream, will increasingly impact network performance. There is the potential for their consumption to result in substandard experiences for many other customers, who are denied the speeds they were promised.
The report was issued this week by OpenVault, which provides SaaS-based revenue and network improvement solutions and data-driven insights for the broadband industry. The OpenVault Broadband Insights report (OVBI) has taken a first look at the emerging extreme power user category. It found that:
- This user group are heavy streamers. On average they stream 13 times as much data as users who consume 1 TB or less of total broadband data.
- Extreme power users consume six times more data for online gaming than users of 1 TB or less per month.
- Extreme power users’ average upstream usage of 950 GB is 5.5x that of subscribers who consume 2-5 TB per month and 12x that of users of 1-2 TB monthly.
- The majority of extreme power users (59%) are on gigabit tier speed plans, but 7% are provisioned for speeds of 100 Mbps or slower.
- They consume the least amount of social media data when compared to users in other high-usage categories.
“Extreme power users that average 5 TB or more monthly, currently make up a modest fraction of subscribers but their numbers are steadily increasing in tandem with the widespread adoption of faster speed tiers,” the report notes.
Other findings in the Q3/23 report include:
- The monthly average data usage was 550.2 GB, up 11% year over year from 495.5 GB in Q3/22, and up 3% from the 533.8 GM recorded in Q2/23.
- Power users consuming 1 TB or more per month grew to 16.4%, a year over year increase of 19.7%, while the percentage of super power users of 2 TB or more increased by 35%, to 2.9%.
- The percentage of subscribers on gigabit speed tiers reached a new high of 32.1% in Q3/23, slightly more than the 31.6% in Q2/23, more than doubling the 15.3% figure from Q3/22.
- The percentage of subscribers on 100 Mbps or slower plans (10.1%) has dropped 22% since Q3/22.
