The OpenVault Broadband Insights (OVBI) report for the third quarter of 2020 has just been released. The report includes data on broadband traffic volumes compared to earlier time periods as well as usage patterns by consumers. Interestingly, the report observed that "[t]he top 10% of subscribers by usage consume more than half (54%) of all upstream traffic." And the OVBI report indicated that so called "power users" – subscribers who use more than 1 TB of data per month – constituted 8.8% of broadband subscribers, a 110% increase compared to the third quarter of 2019.
Usage based billing (UBB) operators had roughly 25% more gigabit subscribers than FRB [flat rate billing] operators in 3Q20, perhaps due to the fact that UBB operators often provide higher usage quotas for the gigabit tier than the slower bandwidth tiers. This provides incentive to subscribers of UBB operators to upgrade to the faster speeds.
As pointed out in a blog post from August 2018, the Restoring Internet Freedom Order recognizes the consumer welfare aspects of usage-based pricing plans: "Usage allowances may benefit consumers by offering them more choices over a greater range of service options, and, for mobile broadband networks, such plans are the industry norm today, in part reflecting the different capacity issues on mobile networks." Other aspects of usage-based billing are discussed in that blog post. Going forward, it is important the FCC continues to affirm the freedom of broadband Internet service providers to offer pricing plans that cater to the preferences of both "power users" and lower-volume data users.
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