Over 14% of US Internet subscribers now use over 1TB a month

The COVID-19 pandemic caused an unexpected boom in Internet traffic. The growing traffic is caused by a variety of reasons, including work-from-home, online education, and people consuming a lot more digital content because there's nothing else to do.

ARS Technica writes 14.1 percent of US Internet subscribers now consume over 1TB of data a month. That's almost double as much as before the pandemic:

"The power user category continue[d] to accelerate [in Q4 2020], with 14.1 percent of weighted average subscribers now consuming over 1TB of data per month, up 94 percent from 2019," OpenVault's report said. In Q4 2019, 7.3 percent of US-based subscribers used over 1TB. (The weighted figures include both users with data caps and users with unlimited plans.)

The 14.1 percent figure is also a big jump from Q3 2020, when OpenVault research found that 8.8 percent of broadband subscribers used at least 1TB per month. The 1TB figure is significant because AT&T and other ISPs impose monthly data caps of 1TB or less. Comcast raised its cap to 1.2TB starting in mid-2020, while Cox's is now up to 1.25TB. People using 1TB on a capped service are at risk of paying overage fees, which generally cost $10 for each additional block of 50GB.

Funny how Internet usage has increased so much over the last couple of years. I can still remember a time when 10GB a month was considered a lot for broadband Internet.