Market Data

FCC 2016 Broadband Progress Report

Wireless broadband usage skyrocketing, but 10% of

Americans still lack access to fixed broadband

Once again the FCC has issued its annual report on the progress of making broadband available to all Americans and once again it has found the deployment of fixed broadband wanting, particularly in rural and tribal areas. But there has been some progress, the Commission said, at least in urban areas.

That is the overview found in the 85-page document issued at the end of January 2016.

So, as it has said before, the FCC will take immediate action to hasten deployment by encouraging investment in broadband infrastructure and encouraging competition. Details are sadly lacking.

FCC data show that about 10%, or 34 million Americans – nearly the population of Canada – lack access to the standard fixed broadband service of 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream. About 10.6M of them live in urban areas. This access in urban areas is improved from last year, when 17% were unserved. In rural and tribal areas, the numbers unserved are 39% of population.

Wireless usage continues to climb, and the FCC reported that smartphones now comprise 77% of mobile phones, vs. 50% two years ago. And usage is growing rapidly, rising to 849MB per month per subscriber, from 122 MB per month three years earlier.

Most of this mobile data usage was for health related matters, online banking, job searches and educational pursuits, the FCC said.

Most U.S. broadband networks deliver on stated rates.

Updated study shows providers on average delivered 101% of advertised downstream speed.

Most customers who pay for broadband Internet connections over cable, DSL, fiber-optic and satellite networks are getting what they’re paying for, an updated FCC study shows.

The FCC’s Measuring Broadband America report, released June 18 and based on 8 million measurements involving 177 million unique tests, found a close alignment between advertised broadband speeds and the actual performance providers are delivering.

Read the full report here.

The report found that on average, the 16 measured broadband providers delivered 101% of advertised downstream speeds, and 107% of advertised upstream speeds.

Performance varied by provider, however. Of the 16 broadband providers evaluated during September 2013, 10 matched or exceeded the download speeds advertised for particular service offerings over a full-time, 24x7 measurement span. During high-demand hours of 7-11 p.m. Monday through Friday, performance lagged to a greater degree, with 10 of the 16 providers falling short of advertised downstream speeds. (The 10 peak-time laggards: AT&T, CenturyLink, Charter Communications, Frontier Fiber, Frontier DSL, Insight, Qwest, Time Warner Cable, Verizon DSL and Windstream.)

The largest performance gap came from Verizon’s DSL service, which managed only 83% of advertised rates during both time intervals. Comcast, the nation’s largest broadband provider, clocked in at 111% of advertised speeds on a 24/7 basis, and 107% during peak hours.

Satellite supremacy (sort of)

Repeating for the second year as best-in-class from a performance versus advertising standpoint was ViaSat Inc.’s Exede satellite broadband service, which blew past its advertised downstream speeds. On an around-the-clock basis, ViaSat delivered 150% of its advertised downstream speed of 12 Mbps, and during peak hours, the satellite provider registered 139% of the advertised data rate. (The downside: each of Exede’s three broadband plans involve caps on the amount of data customers can use each month before paying a surcharge, and owing to the long distances packets must travel to get to and from its satellite, Exede’s average latency of 671 milliseconds is 19x the FCC-measured average for other broadband providers. Sorry, gamers.)

Drilling down beyond averages, however, the FCC found ISPs have room to improve in terms of service consistency. The FCC found about one-third of the ISPs delivered only 60 percent or better of advertised speeds 80 percent of the time to 80 percent of their consumers. “This is a metric that we expect ISPs to improve upon over the course of the next year,” the commission report said.

Broadband in the U.S. and beyond: faster than ever

Average U.S. downstream speed improved 31% year-over-year to 9.8 Mbps.

Akamai’s latest State of the Internet report for Q3 2013 shows the average U.S. broadband user now enjoys some serious speed: 9.6 megabits per second in downstream data delivery, to be exact.

That’s an increase of 31% from the year-earlier measure, reflecting an ongoing progression of performance improvements brought to the marketplace by leading cable and DSL providers as well as newer platforms like fiber-to-the-home networks.

Download Akamai's Q3 2013 State of the Internet report here.

The U.S. isn’t alone in experiencing better broadband. Average connection speeds rose 29% year-over-year, with all of the top 10 countries/regions climbing 27 percent or more. Globally, 133 qualifying countries/regions saw year-over-year increases in average connection speeds, from 0.2 percent in Egypt (to 1.2 Mbps) to 259 percent in Réunion (to 6.8 Mbps), according to Akamai.

FCC report shows rising profile for wireless broadband.

As the broadband category grows, wireless is poised to overtake fixed broadband for total connections.

esidential mobile wireless connections appeared poised to outnumber fixed network connections sometime in 2013.

The FCC’s Internet Access Services Report, expressing data from Internet providers collected through December 2012, paints a picture of a fast-changing broadband environment where mobile broadband providers have gained enormous market presence and were on the verge of surpassing fixed providers for numerical supremacy in the category.

Download the 2013 FCC Internet Access Services Report here.

Overall, the FCC counted 105 million total residential broadband connections delivering downstream data rates advertised at 3 Mbps or faster, coupled with upstream data rates of 768 kbps or faster, as of December 2012. That’s more than 3x the number (29 million) recorded at the close of 2008, reflecting the rapid adoption of broadband in the U.S.

One interesting underlying story is the rapid ascension of mobile as a broadband access technology. Of a total of U.S. 131 million mobile wireless connections delivering downstream data of at least 200 kbps, about 35% meet the FCC hurdle of a 3 Mbps/768 kbps broadband service. As such, mobile wireless providers accounted for 45 million residential connections meeting the higher-performance broadband threshold as of December 2012, exhibiting a growth trajectory that’s impressive. Based on the growth curve, mobile wireless providers were poised to overtake fixed providers for the sheer number of residential broadband connections sometime in 2013 (and likely did – although the data won’t be published by the FCC until late 2014). 

Before we risk overstating the gravity here, some caveats are in order. Keep in mind the FCC counts “residential connections” reported by providers. In the case of mobile wireless, that means one connection is tallied for every individual subscribing to a mobile broadband service. In the case of fixed providers, the FCC is receiving reported counts of households, not individuals, as fixed broadband residential connections almost always are shared among residents.

That gives a huge numerical advantage to wireless for total connections. Also, in the large majority of cases, it’s not an either-or scenario. Instead, individuals have access to both types of access networks. In other words, an individual with a mobile wireless connection likely lives in a residence where there is also a fixed broadband connection.

That said, the trend line is interesting in that it indicates that the U.S. was on the brink of an inflection point in which there are more wireless broadband connections than fixed broadband connections. Looking forward, a provocative question is whether at some point a meaningful number of users might elect to discontinue a fixed broadband connection in favor of a wireless-only broadband tether to the Internet.

Aside from the evolving yin-yang between fixed and wireless networks, the FCC report offers a densely packed statistical portrait of broadband in the U.S. circa 2012. Among highlights:

The market grew impressively in 2012. Looking at the total marketplace, including all business and residential connections, at year-end 2012, there were almost 65 million total fixed and 64 million mobile connections with download speeds advertised at or above 3 Mbps and upload speeds advertised at or above 768 kbps as compared to 51 million fixed and 31 million mobile connections a year earlier.

Higher speeds are evident in more places. The number of connections with downstream speeds advertised at least 10 Mbps increased by 35% over December 2011, to 60 million connections. Also, the reported data show a 18% annual increase in the number of residential fixed-location connections that are advertised to provide at least 6 Mbps downstream and 1.5 Mbps upstream (from 32.3 million to 38.1 million) and a 20% annual increase in the number of connections that are advertised to provide at least 10 Mbps downstream and 1.5 Mbps upstream (from 31.6 million to 38.0 million).

More mobile wireless customers are taking all-you-can-eat data plans. Reported residential mobile wireless service subscribers with mobile devices and data plans for full Internet access increased by 24%, to 131 million, between December 2011 and December 2012. 

Cable remains the dominant provider of fixed broadband access. At the end of 2012, cable accounted for 41 million of the 60 million residential connections delivering data rates of 3Mbps/768kbps or faster – a market share of 60%. DSL lines accounted for 11.6 million connections, and fiber-to-the-home access networks accounted for 6 million connections.

Broadband availability is high. Less than 1% of U.S. census tracts had no provider advertising a 200 kbps or better Internet access service. (There are 74,000 U.S. census tracts, although not all contain households.) Roughly 16 percent of census tracts did not have an advertised mobile broadband service available as of December 2012. 

Where to find (good) data about broadband.

From the country with the fastest-growing broadband penetration to trends in U.S. home broadband adoption. Statistics and data about the broadband revolution.

Mexico had the fastest broadband penetration growth (5.2%) during the 2nd half of

   2012 among countries tracked by OECD.

OECD: Global broadband by the numbers

The country with the highest broadband penetration among individuals? Switzerland (43.4%). The country with the most broadband subscriptions overall? The U.S., with 90 million. The highest share of broadband connections delivered by fiber optic networks? You’ll find it in Japan, where just under 63% of broadband users get their connectivity through a fiber network. Those are just some samples of data points compiled by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which maintains a current compilation of statistics about broadband at adedicated portal. Some industry participants quibble with the methodologies, but for an authoritative look at the global broadband ecosystem, nobody else comes close. 

Pew Research: usage and behaviors

How broadband infiltrates and impacts daily life, at least in the U.S. is a recurring theme in research published by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, which maintains a rich repository of original research about broadband and offers overview statistics here. Among notable recent studies:

What Internet Users Do Online (December 2012)
Home Broadband Adoption (December 2012)
Digital Differences (April 2012)

BuddeComm: Country-by-country profiles and data

Telecommunications industry researcher BuddeComm maintains a variety of reports about broadband deployment and adoption by country. You’ll have to pay for the full reports, but the executive summaries offer nice, quick-hit takes on what’s going on where in broadband. Here’s an example from Australia.