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Fiber Speed Matters

Doug Mohney
Doug Mohney
Data collected by HarrisX, a market research firm, implies that sheer speed plays a role in overall broadband customer satisfaction. Fiber comes out on top, continuing to increase happiness in households over the past five years.
“Fiber remains king. Customer satisfaction with [fiber] is the highest in terms of in-home connectivity providers,” said Dritan Nesho, Global CEO, HarrisX. “We looked at the snapshot of the last five years to compare it among all home internet users. You can see that satisfaction for fiber has grown by 10%, from 72% to 82%. The satisfaction of fiber customers is the highest within the industry.”
HarrisX draws data from multiple sources to comprehensively examine the consumer market. One example was a communications survey where 90,000 households were sampled. The survey examined home internet bills to correlate internet speed tiers with satisfaction and the use of a telemetry application to monitor smartphone traffic over Wi-Fi vs. cellular networks.

Total speed matters as well as the medium, with fiber coming on top over comparisons to cable, legacy DSL, and newer cellular fixed wireless services.

“We see a very clear story about the impact of throughput and speeds on customer satisfaction,” said Nesho. “If you’re in the one to 200 Mbps range, your satisfaction is high at 66%. But satisfaction grows steadily as you move into the next bucket of 200 to 400 Mbps, and the same as you move into 400 to 1000 Mbps or one gigabyte speeds. Then it just skyrockets with one gigabyte and faster speeds. So, speed does matter and the investments that have been made in providing for better throughput and better speeds really show themselves in the data and in the research in a clear and unambiguous way.”

However, there’s also work to be done in consumer awareness, especially with higher speed tiers. “Some consumers aren’t even aware they have gigabit service,” said Nesho, with customers either not informed or not fully aware they have access to such high speeds.

“This is a gap that can be closed through effective communication, constant communication, effective marketing, and constant marketing,” stated Nesho. “It’s an area that should pay dividends for the industry, especially given the much higher satisfaction rates that we’ve seen pair with gigabit plus speeds. And perception is as important as reality when it comes to the consumer mindset around these things because again, it’s something that they don’t measure on a constant basis.”

To learn more about the consumer mindset around fiber and speeds, tune into the latest Fiber for Breakfast.

https://soundcloud.com/user-491717682/ffb-episode-136-bringing-a-consumer-perspective-to-home-internet?si=1b0983153dc74767904e72103f95ddd7&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

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