2022 USTelecom Broadband Pricing Report: Further Proof that Competition Is Benefiting Consumers

On Wednesday, USTelecom | The Broadband Association released its third annual Broadband Pricing Index (BPI) Report. Once again, the facts demonstrate that competition between broadband service providers is benefiting consumers through ever-higher speeds and – critically, given rising costs overall – steadily decreasing prices.

"2022 Broadband Pricing Index: A Comparative Analysis Showing Decreasing Prices and Increasing Value for U.S. Broadband Service Over Time" (2022 BPI Report) focuses on two types of broadband service tiers – the most popular and the highest speed – and compares their average prices and speeds in 2020 to those from (1)  the year prior, and (2) 2015.

According to the 2022 BPI Report, over the last twelve months, prices for goods and services generally grew 8 percent. By contrast, the average cost of the most-popular tier, adjusted for inflation, fell 14.7 percent, from $42.59 to $36.33. The average price of the highest-speed tier, adjusted for inflation, decreased by 11.6 percent, from $65.78 to $58.12.

Since 2015, inflation-adjusted prices have plummeted 44.6 percent, from $65.62 to $36.33, for the most popular tier and 52.7 percent, from $122.94 to $58.12, for the highest-speed tier.

Meanwhile, average speeds for both tiers increased dramatically between 2015 and 2022:

• Download speeds for the most-popular tier grew 127.7 percent, from 43 megabits per second (Mbps) to 98 Mbps;
• Upload speeds for the most-popular tier expanded at nearly twice that rate: 249.3 percent, from 13 Mbps to 44 Mbps;
• Download speeds for the highest-speed tier increased 84.6 percent, from 141 Mbps to 259 Mbps; and
• Upload speeds for the highest-speed tier increased 107 percent, from 51 Mbps to 103.7 Mbps.

The full 2022 BPI Report is available here, an overview here. For summaries of, and links to, the first two reports, please check out these posts to the FSF Blog: 2021 BPI Report and 2020 BPI Report.