It may seem that the price of everything is going up these days, but that’s not the case with broadband, which continues to see lower costs for the most popular and highest speeds.
A recent report by US Telecom found that the most popular broadband services (dubbed Consumer Choice) in the study dropped by nearly 14.7 percent from 2021 to 2022. In addition, the costs for plans with the fastest speeds also dropped 11.6 percent from 2021 to 2022. These cost decreases came as the overall costs of goods and services increased by 8 percent in the past year in the U.S.
It should be pointed out that those fastest speeds have, well, also experienced increases in the past seven years, with weighted download speeds increasing from 141 Megabits per second to 259 Mbps and weighted upload speeds increasing from 51 Mbps to 104 Mbps.
The speed boosts ensure that more Americans have access to bandwidth-intensive activities such as streaming, gaming and telehealth. This means that the cost per megabit has dropped from $1.52 per megabit to 37 cents per megabit for Consumer Choice plans.
Long term, the study found that Consumer Choice tier prices have dropped by nearly half (44.6 percent) from 2015 to 2022 while the costs for the fastest speeds decreased by 52.7 percent during the same time. In comparison, the consumer price index for other essential goods and services saw big jumps from 2015 to 2022, including 53.3 percent for health insurance, 28.4 percent for car insurance and 27.5 percent for rent.
As the study notes, “The cost of broadband has never been lower and consumers have never received more value for their broadband buck then they are right now. This couldn’t come at a better time as nearly all aspects of American life – work, entertainment, education and social – have moved online.”
The results of the US Telecom study mirror those found by BroadbandNow, which reported significant price decreases from 2016 to 2022. That website analyzed pricing data from 50 national and regional internet providers and found that prices decreased for all major download speeds examined (between 25Mbps and 1 Gigabit per second) and across all technologies (cable, DSL, fiber and fixed wireless).
Proponents of government broadband often cite lowering the cost of broadband as a reason to use taxpayer money to fund such projects. But the US Telecom report shows that those costs keep decreasing as the economies of scale work to benefit both private providers and their customers.
