Low fixed traffic growth - the old normal

Each year we take a look at fixed broadband traffic growth around the world. Our report last year suggested that growth of around 10% was the 'new normal'. The latest report show remarkably similar growth - around 11% - so the new normal is becoming the old normal.

As the chart above shows, internet traffic growth has - pandemic aside - been on a downward trend since 2016. It has perhaps now found a steady state, albeit a low one.

That said, slower growth off a high base case can still be quite substantial in absolute terms, and six countries have now passed 500GB per month (equivalent to 12 hours of streamed HD video per day per household). There is enormous variation though - the US is at around 600 GB, Hungary at a little over 200GB, for example.

The English-speaking countries continue to lead the pack, with usage roughly 70% above that of the 13 EU countries in our sample:

This is not an issue caused by the EU's infrastructure, by the way - fibre penetration in the relevant EU countries is actually higher than that in the Anglosphere. In a sense this is good news - it suggests enormous latent potential in the broadband the EU already has. Greater EU citizen value from the internet does not need to wait on funding and deployment of more fibre, Europe just needs to use its infrastructure as efficiently as the Anglosphere already does.

Why is growth slowing? One reason is that key use cases - such as streaming video - are reaching saturation, at least in some markets. For example, in the UK, for those aged under 45, streamed video is already well over half their total video consumption.

However, this can't be the whole story, since growth is slowing everywhere, not just in the markets that are most mature. With limited exceptions, across the sample of 23 countries we track, growth is now in a relatively tight band of 0-20%.

It may be that systemic factors - such as ever-improving video compression - are supressing traffic growth everywhere.

Regardless, it looks as if the days of '30% traffic growth' (a remarkably resilient zombie statistic) are long behind us, unless networked VR or something else gets serious traction.