An S&P Global Market Intelligence media research group known as Kagan estimates that broadband-only households will almost double from 19 million in 2017 to 37.2 million in 2022, as a result of a dramatic shift in consumer viewing behavior. This is a 14.4% compounded annual growth rate from 2017 to 2022 for broadband-only households that have subscriptions to wireline broadband, but no traditional multichannel video package.
With this consumer shift, operators offering both video and broadband may hold an advantage, according to Kagan research. By 2020 cable will count 70 million broadband customers, while video subscriber count will have already peaked at 67.1 million in 2001. Kagan is predicting traditional multichannel penetration to be in the low 60% range by 2022, while broadband-only homes reaching 29.2% of households.
Senior Kagan Research Analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence, Tony Lenoir, discussed the underlying factors impacting these trends in a recent press release, saying that, “A perfect storm of long-term trends including increase in streaming content suppliers, widespread utility-like status of broadband, and a demographic shift attributable to shrinking baby boomers and rising millennials, is yielding higher broadband-only home gains than initially anticipated, prompting a significant upward update for our projections.”
Kagan is also foreseeing that 38.4% of combined telco wireline broadband and residential cable subscribers in 2022 will rely on a combination of over-the-air broadcast signals and broadband for home video entertainment.
