Be it our work, our study, entertainment, or day to day activities like ordering groceries, we all are heavily dependent on the internet for almost everything these days. So it won’t be surprising to say that the broadband usage has grown significantly for the past few years. There have been many studies performed using broadband industry analytics to understand how the use of broadband has increased over the years. One such study was popularly carried out by sandvine that gathers data from 160 fixed and wireless ISPs to understand the trend of internet usage worldwide. Using this data, a report was made to state different trends taking place in the industry that gives us some clear idea about the growing broadband usage all across the world.
In this article we will have a brief look at how this growth in broadband usage has taken place over the years and what has truly influenced this growth.
The Growth in Broadband Usage
Studies have shown that the broadband across the internet has grown by 34% in the year 2020. It again showed a significant growth of more than 29% in the year 2021. It was estimated that the worldwide broadband usage by the end of 2021 was 786 terabytes per second. This use can be divided as the internet used in offices, schools, homes, and public places like restaurants. However it was observed that the maximum usage took place at home. According to an estimate of a study conducted by Savine, the internet usage at home level at the end of 2021 was about 750 gigabytes per month. Also the shift from 4G to 5G in Asia has caused the broadband usage to go up by a whopping 60% as compared to before.
Factors Contributing to the Growth in Broadband Usage
There are quite a few factors that contribute to the growth in broadband usage. Some of the main factors include applications that are popularly used like Google, Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and many more. These applications have a huge share in the growing traffic on the internet. Along with these social applications, streaming platforms like Netflix also contribute a great deal to the growing broadband usage. The social networking platforms along with Netflix and other streaming platforms together generate up to 57% of worldwide broadband traffic.
There are also many other factors like online gaming that can generate more internet traffic and thus lead to an increased broadband usage. Every online activity that you carry out will cause an increase in broadband usage. Video streaming platforms like Youtube, messaging platforms and even music platforms like spotify contribute a significant share of online traffic as more and more people are making use of them since the past few years. All of these factors when combined together can be of great help to measure the overall worldwide growth in broadband usage.
So to conclude, it is safe to say that the use of broadband has increased significantly over the years. There are a number of factors that have caused this as discussed above. Almost all our activities have become internet dependent and the internet has a great influence on our lives. As more and more people are choosing to go digital, the use of broadband has significantly grown and obviously the people would also require help for the broadband problems and they look out to get broadband management solutions. Another important factor that was found to have affected broadband usage in the recent years is use of real time applications like zoom calls, which was earlier not a significant factor. This goes to show that depending on the type of use by the people, the reasons behind broadband usage keep on changing.