HOBOKEN, NJ – The percentage of subscribers who are pushing against the upper limits of their broadband speed tiers has increased dramatically during the past 18 months, according to the 3Q 2021 OVBI (OpenVault Broadband Insights) report. The report was issued today by OpenVault, a market-leading source of SaaS-based revenue and network improvement solutions and data-driven insights for the broadband industry.

“Speed clipping” – defined as a subscriber exceeding 80% of provisioned broadband speed – spiked at nearly 400% of early pandemic levels in comparisons between May 2020 and September 2021 usage figures. Speed clipping can result in poor customer experiences that require customer care and network troubleshooting resources to resolve. In reality, the issues are not network-based and this effort and expense can be avoided through the use of proper analytics tools

While the number of gigabit subscribers has grown 4.5X over the last two years, the majority of subscribers (56.2%) remain in speed tier packages of 200 Mbps or slower. Speed clipping occurs as those subscribers access – often simultaneously by multiple users in the same household – high-bandwidth applications such as video streaming, gaming and video conferencing.

Using data from one of OpenVault's broadband providers, the report indicates that downstream speed clipping in September 2021 was close to 400% of the May 2020 figure during the 9 p.m. hour. In the upstream, where many providers are architecturally constrained by capacity limits, speed clipping peaked at a 150% increase during the 11:00 p.m. hour. Overall, speed clipping incidents were up 52.6% in the downstream and 48.8% in the upstream during the same time period.

Other findings from OpenVault's analysis of 3Q21 data patterns included:

OpenVault