According to a report from OpenVault, overall broadband usage continued to grow rapidly in the first quarter of 2019, driven in part by the rise in Internet-only subscribers and an increasing number of "power users."
The OpenVault Broadband Industry (OVBI) report, a quarterly report that reflects broadband usage based on the aggregate consumption of millions of subscribers, indicates that overall average monthly usage reached a new high of 273.5 GB in Q1 of 2019, a year-over-year increase of 27% over the Q1 2018 monthly average of 215.4 GB.
Other findings indicate:
Internet-only subscribers consumed 395.7 GB, more than 120 GB more than the average subscriber and almost double the 209.5 GB consumed by households that purchase a bundle of video and Internet services.
The percentage of power users, defined as subscribers who consume 1 TB or more of data per month, doubled to 4.2% of all subscribers in Q1 2019 from 2.1% in Q1 2018; during the same period, the "power users of the future" - the number of subscribers exceeding 2 TB per month - more than doubled to 0.38% in Q1 2019 from 0.16%.
Differences in the percentage of power users are sharply pronounced between Internet-only subscribers and households that take video-Internet bundles. Power users of 1 TB or more account for 6.5% of all Internet-only subscribers vs. 2.2% for subscribers who take a bundle of video and Internet services, while median usage is 294.5 GB for Internet-only subscribers vs. 93.8 GB for bundled households.
The OVBI report indicate differences between operators who employ flat-rate billing and those who employ usage-based billing. In flat-rate billing systems, the percentage of power users is 32% greater than in usage-based billing systems, and the percentage of subscribers using more than 2 TB is 76% greater.
"As more and more households opt out of service providers' service bundles, operators are facing significantly increased demand for broadband capacity," said Josh Barstow, executive vice president of Corporate Strategy and Business Development for OpenVault. "It's in the best interest of the industry to use existing tools to ensure that subscribers are provisioned for the appropriate levels of service, and to consider usage-based billing as a bandwidth-management tool."
OpenVault will exhibit its analytics and technology solutions at ANGA COM in Cologne, Germany, in June.
