Analyst Report Broadband/Connectivity/Telcos

Cord-cutting set to spike as broadband users drop bundles: OVBI report

The analysis showed that the difference in usage between cord-cutters and average subscribers rose from 14% six months before the event to 20% in the month immediately prior and 30% in the month that the cord was cut.
Research from OpenVault has revealed that the difference in usage between cord-cutters and average subscribers rose from 14% six months before the event to 20% in the month immediately prior and 30% in the month that the cord was cut.
In the following three months, the difference rose to nearly 70%.

Using aggregate consumption of millions of subscribers, the OVBI report also revealed what OpenVault said was a ‘significant’ difference between internet-only households and those who have a bundled package of pay-TV and broadband services.

Among Internet-only households, average bandwidth consumption in 2Q19 was 390.42 GBytes, while bundled subscribers consumed, on average, 210.89 GB of data in 2Q19 – a difference of 85%.

The data also showed that average broadband usage in European markets increased by more than 28% from Q2 2018 to Q2 2019, slightly ahead of the 25% YOY growth in the United States. Average downstream usage in Europe continued its annual growth trend of 30% in 2019, in which upstream usage grew 14%. The share of European subscribers consuming more than 250 GB was 22.13% as of June 2019, up nearly 47% from June 2018.

Usage-based billing (UBB) was being deployed to limit those consuming over a terabyte of data per month, defined as ‘power users’. When compared with subscribers on flat-rate billing (FRB) plans, UBB subscribers were 23% less likely to exceed 1 TByte of usage and 61% less likely to exceed 2 TBytes. A higher percentage of FRB subscribers were found to be provisioned for lower-speed packages compared to UBB subscribers and among FRB subscribers, 41% were provisioned for speeds of 30 Mbps or less, compared with 13% among UBB subscribers.

Commenting on the report Josh Barstow, Executive Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Business Development for OpenVault said: “While usage-based billing often is considered as a revenue-enhancing tool, the reality is that it spurs subscribers to find harmony between their broadband speeds and their usage patterns.”

“As more and more subscribers exhibit cord-cutting behaviour, visibility into usage behaviour and sound-based billing plans based billing plans will help operators to manage increasingly busy networks and ensure subscriber satisfaction.”