OpenVault flagged a sharp increase in the number of broadband users bumping up against the speed limits imposed on lower-tier service plans and warned a poorer customer experience could be the result if operators don’t proactively tackle the issue.
The company highlighted an uptick in what it called “speed clipping” in its Q3 2021 OpenVault Broadband Insights (OVBI) report. It defined speed clipping as instances in which a subscriber exceeds 80% of their provisioned speeds, noting that it is more likely users will encounter service degradation when this threshold is crossed.
In Q3 2021, OVBI data showed 16.5% of broadband subscribers were provisioned on service tiers offering download speeds of 500Mbps or higher, with 11.4% of on plans providing 1 Gbps or higher. Those figures were up significantly year on year from 11.4% and 5.63%, respectively. However, a majority of consumers (56.2%) remained on speed tiers offering 200 Mbps or less, with nearly 18% of these receiving 100 Mbps or less.
The report asserted “speed clipping is occurring because more subscribers are using popular high-bandwidth applications without adjusting their speed tiers to match their usage.” It noted instances of speed clipping can result in unnecessary calls to customer care and truck rolls when “in most cases there is nothing wrong with the network.”
OpenVault did not provide industry-wide metrics for speed clipping. Instead, it presented a case study using data from a midsized broadband provider, which showed more than half (52.6%) of subscribers routinely reached the 80% benchmark.
It urged operators to proactively identify speed clipping subscribers, arguing they can “improve customer satisfaction and net promoter scores (NPS), reduce operational expenses and increase ARPU” by doing so.
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OVBI data showed the monthly weighted average data consumed by subscribers hit 434.9 GB in Q3, up 13% year on year. That figure included 407 GB of downstream usage and 28 GB upstream consumption. The percentage of so-called “power users” consuming more than 1 TB per month increased 46% year on year to 1.43%.
The average downstream speed in Q3 was 253.9 Mbps while the average upstream speed was 17.7 Mbps.