High-volume subscribers, upstream growth spur emphasis on broadband QoE
Jersey City, NJ; February 25, 2025 – The percentage of Power User subscribers consuming 1 TB of data or more per month has more than tripled in the past five years as broadband usage closed in on another data milestone in 2024. The findings were reported in the latest edition of the OpenVault Broadband Insights (OVBI) report issued today by OpenVault, a market-leading source of SaaS-based revenue and network improvement solutions and data-driven insights for the broadband industry.
According to the report, the percentage of Power Users rose to almost one-quarter of all subscribers – 24.3% – in 4Q24, a 232% increase over the 7.3% reported at the end of the last pre-pandemic report, in 2019. The surge in high-volume users, together with continued growth in the upstream growth rate and consistent incremental downstream increases, boosted average monthly total consumption nearing 700 GB.
The report’s analysis of data collected by OpenVault’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology solutions shows how historic correlations between broadband speeds and consumption have continued to yield to a new broadband environment. Using data points from millions of individual subscribers, OpenVault notes a variety of key milestones at the end of 2024, including:
- Record average monthly total consumption of 698.2 GB;
- A continued rise in upstream growth, reaching 14.6%; and
- Consumption by individual Extreme Power Users of as much as 53x more downstream and 123x more upstream than the average subscriber.
“Significant shifts in broadband usage patterns continue to reshape the landscape of network performance and subscriber experience,” the report notes. “While average data consumption reached a new milestone, the rate of upstream data growth outpaced the rate of downstream growth, reflecting broader changes in user behavior. As subscribers upgrade to faster speeds at a slower pace, the focus is moving away from speed improvements and toward maintaining optimal network health, performance, and Quality of Experience (QoE).”
Traditionally a benchmark of broadband activity over the previous year, the 4Q OVBI highlights notable trends, including Christmas Day when video conferencing with friends and family, holiday movie streaming, the unboxing of new online games, and the addition of new connected devices drives usage to new heights. The 4Q24 report draws a bead on Christmas Day consumption, the diverging paths of upstream and downstream growth rates, and the impact that the highest-volume subscribers can have on network traffic. Among the findings:
- Christmas Day usage, consistently high from 9 a.m. until 10 p.m., was 24% higher than on Christmas Day 4Q22 and 58% higher than in 4Q20.
- While the 14.6% rate of upstream growth represented continued upward acceleration, downstream growth rate of 8.6% was marginally less than in 4Q23, continuing a declining rate of increase.
- The subscriber with the highest downstream data usage consumed 34 TB in 4Q24—53x the average downstream usage of 652.3 GB per subscriber. The top individual upstream usage was 5.5 TB, a staggering 123x the average upstream usage of 45.9 GB in 4Q24.
To address the need for higher performance, the broadband industry is developing and deploying new solutions that can optimize profiles and create more available bandwidth. The 4Q24 OVBI includes a brief on the deployment of OV Advanced PMA™, showing a 27% increase in throughput from 201 Mbps to 255 Mbps. This resulted in sufficient bandwidth to accommodate the high-definition streaming of 10 to 15 Netflix movies.
OpenVault CEO and Founder Mark Trudeau will discuss the findings and their implications for the industry on a webinar on Thursday, March 13 at 11 a.m. EST. Registration is at https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_J9iHo4JhTtGg0lPNqRN2mQ.
The entire report is at https://openvault.com/resources/ovbi/.
About OpenVault
OpenVault and OpenVault Europe GmbH are market-leading sources of broadband technology solutions and data-driven insights into worldwide broadband consumption patterns. Using the companies’ cloud-based SaaS or on-premises solutions and tools, service providers can optimize network performance, increase revenue, and improve subscriber satisfaction. OpenVault and OpenVault Europe aggregate and analyze the resulting market data to provide unparalleled granular views of consumer usage that can be used to anticipate residential and business broadband trends. This data analysis drives a suite of actionable and automated solutions, providing operators with tremendous value through software and avoiding the need for large-scale infrastructure spending.
For more information, please visit openvault.com.
For media inquiries, please contact:
Kristen Nihamin at knihamin@openvault.com or 917-509-9028
Paul Schneider at paul@paulschneiderpr.com or 215-817-4384