The FCC today released their annual “Measuring Broadband America” report which tests consumer broadband performance in the U.S. The report’s findings underscore that the U.S. enjoys a healthy, growing, and competitive broadband marketplace. The good news from a cable perspective is that providers are delivering speeds that consistently meet or exceed advertised numbers. That isn’t a surprise and is consistent with past studies.
What else did we learn? A new relevant finding indicates that satellite broadband is showing significantly improved service quality, delivering well above advertised upload and download speeds. The chart below shows the largest exceeded performance gap is for Satellite ISPs, which is emerging as yet another provider of broadband services. Another key element of the FCC report shows that consumers have moved into higher speed tiers. This may seem like an obvious point (of course people want more speed), but looking to the chart below, the significant jumps of the 7-10 Mbps and 25 – 30 Mbps tiers demonstrate the value and importance of speedy broadband Internet for things like starting a business, getting an education or watching an HD movie.
