Median Broadband Speed 39 Mbps, With Further Acceleration Expected

The median broadband speed among U.S. consumers hit 39 Mbps this year, up 22 percent from a year ago, and most providers' actual download speeds are as good or better than what's advertised, said the FCC offices of Engineering and Technology and of Strategic Planning in their 2016 Measuring Broadband America fixed broadband report Thursday. Some say speeds may continue rising, as shown by past FCC MBA reports.

"I don't think it tops out," Leichtman Research Group analyst Bruce Leichtman said. "I don't think innovation will stop. I can't remember how many times Comcast has said they have increased speeds the last 16 years, and they will continue to do so. It's part of the business and we will continue to see that for some time forward."

It's the FCC's sixth report since the first in 2011. Maximum advertised download speeds in the most popular ISP service tiers went from 12-30 Mbps in 2011 to 100-300 Mbps by September 2015. Those increases aren't uniform across access technologies, with cable particularly driving the speed increases, while fiber-based systems have seen slighter increases, it said. Average DSL speeds "have increased only slightly" since 2011, it said, while satellite speeds, over a shorter time frame, have been constant. DSL can match cable and fiber in speed, but it also can require infrastructure and hardware investments, the report said. It said some ISPs using DSL offer speeds "significantly in excess of those surveyed," but not in sufficient scale to be included in the study's methodology. The staff said with satellite broadband speed increases relying on new satellites, they will watch how various next-generation Ka-band satellites about to be launched affect satellite broadband metrics.

The offices ding a number of ISPs using DSL for typically providing lower speeds than the advertised "up-to" speeds. They also singled out ViaSat for a significant performance decline from previous years, "suggesting .. that capacity limits are being approached for its current satellite constellation." The report also said ViaSat said it plans more launches for additional capacity starting next year.

ViaSat in a statement said the survey results don't reflect overall customer experience. It pointed to Consumer Reports research that ranked consumer satisfaction with ViaSat's Exede service "higher than most DSL, some cable and considerably higher than any other satellite broadband ISP." The satellite company also cited investments in its current networks and plans to launch "a series of satellite platforms in the near term."

Altice a day earlier announced a 10 Gbps offering across most of its footprint by 2022 (see 1611300029). NCTA said cable ISPs have been boosting their broadband speeds with top tiers increasing 50 percent annually on average. Pointing to the Altice announcement, it said between fiber deployment and DOCSIS 3.1, an increasing number of cable ISP customers will see gigabit services.

The actual broadband speed numbers are immaterial, and most consumers don't know what their ISP actually provides, Leichtman said. "You can talk 1 gig or 5 gig or 10 gig, that's just a number." Of far greater significance is consumer satisfaction with service performance and reliability, he said, saying consumers are "fairly satisfied."

The study included a web browsing performance test, measuring the time required to download a page from nine websites that include text and images but not streaming video. According to the study, webpage download time decreases from about 8 seconds at 1.5 Mbps to 1.3 seconds at 25 Mbps. Beyond 25 Mbps, page download times don't significantly decrease further, it said. Unlike previous studies, the 2016 study uses medians instead of means, aligning it with the open internet order, it said. It said uses weighted medians by tier subscriber counts instead of an aggregate mean across all service tiers. The 2016 study looked at 13 ISPs.