Monday, 10 March 2008

US Consumers Eyeing 'High Speed' Broadband More Closely

US consumers are becoming aware of the limitations that some broadband service connections provide, particularly in regard to available bandwidth...

US consumers are becoming aware of the limitations that some broadband service connections provide, particularly in regard to available bandwidth, reports a recent In-Stat study.

The amount of bandwidth that is available to a broadband data service end-user has become important, says the high-tech market research firm. The more bandwidth an Internet service offers, the faster the end-user can access multimedia-rich web sites and download files.
"As a general rule of thumb in the broadband world, higher bandwidth is better," says Mike Paxton, In-Stat analyst.

"Consumers readily recognize this fact, and many of them are actively looking for a broadband service that will increase the amount of bandwidth that they can use."

In order to determine US residential broadband speeds, In-Stat recently surveyed over 700 broadband households. These households use several different types of broadband access technologies, to include cable modem service, DSL, Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), satellite broadband, and fixed wireless. A key part of this survey consisted of the households taking a broadband "speed test" administered by an online bandwidth measurement site.

The results of this survey included:

• The average downstream speed of a US broadband connection is 3.8Mbps, while the average upstream speed is 980Kbps.

• FTTH connections offer the fastest broadband speeds, followed by cable modem and DSL connections. The average downstream FTTH speed was 8.8 Mbps, while cable modem connections averaged 4.9 Mbps and DSL averaged 2.1 Mbps.

• The average monthly price for broadband service is currently just over .

• Over 83% of respondents to the In-Stat consumer survey stated they were either "very satisfied" or "somewhat satisfied" with their current connection.