The percentage of power users consuming more than 1 TB of data nearly doubled in the United States this year, as wireline broadband usage accelerated broadly, according to data released by OpenVault.
OpenVault, an analytics and technology provider for broadband operators, said the percentage of ‘power users’ jumped to 4.12 percent of all households in 2018, up from 2.11 percent the year prior. Households consuming more than 250 GB increased to 36.4 percent, from 28.4 percent in 2017.
It’s not just heavy users who are consuming more, according to OpenVault. The company said growth rates for median usage in 2018 continued to significantly outpace the rate of growth for average usage – suggesting that the acceleration trend is happening across broadband providers’ entire subscriber bases.
Average broadband usage increased 33.3 percent in 2018 to 268.7GB per household, up from the 2017 year-end average of 201.6 GB per household.
Median usage for 2017 was 103.6 GB per household, which jumped 40 percent to 145.2 GB in 2018.
In addition, the data shows that consumption was higher in households – both average and power users – that had flat-rate pricing plans, compared to those on usage-based billing (UBB) plans. Average usage with flat-rate pricing was 282.1 GB per household, about 9 percent higher than the 258.2 GB average for UBB households. OpenVault said 4.82 percent of flat-rate households exceeded the 1TB threshold, while 3.81 percent of UBB households used enough data to be considered ‘power users.’
OpenVault tracks usage growth related to connected consumer devices. OpenVault EVP and CTO Tony Costa said in a statement that the data consumption growth the company is seeing was “clearly” boosted by a significant increase in the number of devices per household during the holiday season.
The company saw a 5.3 percent increase in connected devices the week after Christmas, compared to the week before the holiday. Amazon, Samsung and Apple were the main contributors to growth, though Amazon saw the highest growth rate with 15.6 percent more devices connected, compared to 4.1 percent for Samsung and 2.9 percent for Apple.
“Although Apple remains the dominant manufacturer in terms of total devices connected per household, Amazon is gaining market share in the race to own the household connected device environment,” Costa said.