Only 5% of U.S. Homes Do Not Buy At Least 1 Broadband Service

There’s an interesting bit of data in the most-recent Nielsen “Cross Platform” report on media behavior of U.S. consumers. The study shows that 72 percent of households buy both broadband access and a video subscription service. Broadband drives consumer spending

About 18 percent of households buy video service but no broadband, while five percent buy broadband but not video service. About five percent of households do not buy either video service or broadband.

Add it all up and just five percent of U.S. households do not buy at least one broadband service, with the dominant pattern being “video plus broadband access.”

That doesn’t mean narrowband services are unimportant, either in terms of gross revenue or profit margin. It does mean that when forecasters say the telecom business will in the future be built on broadband services, “tomorrow” already has arrived.