OpenVault recently published its Broadband Insights Report for the third quarter of 2025. OpenVault is documenting the continued growth in broadband usage by U.S. households.

One of the most useful statistics from OpenVault is the average monthly broadband usage per household in gigabytes. Below is the trend in average monthly U.S. download and upload volumes since the third quarter of 2021. These averages include broadband usage by residential and small-business customers.

The average U.S. broadband customer used 43 more downloaded gigabytes and 7 more uploaded gigabits per month than a year earlier. This growth means continued pressure on broadband networks because if we assume roughly 120 million broadband subscribers nationwide, this growth means over 6 billion more gigabytes of data are used each month than a year earlier.

One of the most interesting things about the second quarter this year is that the overall average broadband usage was lower than it was in the second quarter, something that hasn’t happened since 2019.

As can be seen in the table above, upload usage has been growing at a faster pace than download usage. In a recent quarterly report, OpenVault credited the growth of upload usage to the increasing usage of video calls, cloud backup, IoT uplinks, and similar uses. To put the 7-gigabyte increase in average upload into context, it’s the equivalent of every household uploading an additional 5 standard definition movie files or 2 high definition movie files every month compared to a year earlier. I think the average household would be surprised by the volume of data they are uploading each month.

Another interesting statistic is the percentage of U.S. subscribers at different speed tiers. Over the last several years, there has been a steady migration of subscribers from slower to faster tiers.

The current report documents a big jump in subscribers in the 200-499 Mbps tier and a decrease in the 500-999 Mbps and the 1 Gbps+ tiers. I have to wonder if this is the impact of millions of homes migrating from cable broadband to FWA wireless. Customers seem to be making the change to get a substantially lower price and seem willing to sacrifice speed for price. We’ll have to see how this trend continues, but it’s the first break in the upward increase in the fastest speed tiers.

OpenVault always includes other interesting statistics in its quarterly reports:

• 39% of Gen Alpha teens spend over three hours a day gaming, and only 30% of this age group watches TV, and only 28% listen to music or podcasts. Over time, this could mean a huge shift in the demand for traditional entertainment.
• 89% of U.S. households now subscribe to at least one streaming service, which is very close to the percentage of homes that have broadband.
• While average usage dropped a bit from the second to the third quarter, the median household usage increased from 431.4 GB to 438.9 GB.