By Claus Hetting, Wi-Fi NOW CEO & Chairman
Plume IQ – the data analytics arm of smart home customer experience provider Plume – keeps churning out highly useful data on the state of home networks across the world. Plume IQ’s latest analysis reveals continued year-on-year home data usage growth among Plume-powered households.
Can we expect home data consumption to keep rising – and if so, how might this impact the quality of the in-home Wi-Fi experience? These are some of the big questions that most ISPs need to ponder on a regular basis. Now we have at least a partial answer: According to Plume IQ the growth of daily home data consumption reached between 16% to 26% when comparing figures from 2H2021 to 2H2022.
The data was collected among Plume ‘HomePass’ clients and anonymised, the company says. The numbers are likely a good growth approximation for high-end home ISPs in mature markets such as the US and Europe. Sunday continues to exhibit the highest rate of consumption while Friday seems to be another favourite day for enjoying video and data connectivity, most of it presumably for entertainment.
The question now becomes how data consumption growth may have impacted the home Wi-Fi experience – for example by increases in Wi-Fi network interference and congestion. Typically, more traffic requires more stringent and perhaps more frequent management of the home Wi-Fi network in order for the user not to experience a deterioration of Wi-Fi quality. Plume IQ says they will release more information next month and as always, we will be reporting on it here.
/Claus.