Investments in higher-speed upstream plant are delivering a sharp rise in upload traffic for US fibre and DOCSIS broadband providers, according to the 4Q2025 OpenVault Broadband Insights (OVBI) report.
OpenVault said upstream usage increased 21.7% year-on-year in 2025, outpacing other consumption metrics, as average monthly total usage rose 9.9% to 767.4GB. It is the first time average usage has exceeded 700GB.
In a first point-in-time comparison of fibre versus DOCSIS subscribers within a selected broadband system, OpenVault found that customers on a fibre network with symmetrical speeds of 677Mbps used 93.0GB of upstream bandwidth in 4Q2025. That was 66% higher than the 56.0GB recorded by subscribers on the same system’s DOCSIS networks, where upstream was provisioned at 17.3Mbps on average.
OpenVault said the findings indicate “latent upstream demand” already exists on DOCSIS networks and is likely to be activated as operators remove performance constraints through higher-split architectures, expanded usable spectrum and optimisation tools such as Profile Management Applications.
The report also highlighted that downstream usage continues to grow at scale. Average downstream consumption of 711.4GB in 4Q2025 exceeded the 698.2GB average total usage recorded at the end of 2024.
Median usage reached 531.8GB, up 15.3% from 481.2GB in 4Q2024, with OpenVault noting the increase is almost equal to the median gains of the previous 2 years combined.
OpenVault warned that steady percentage growth can mask the rapidly expanding absolute volumes traversing networks. While 4Q2025 total usage growth of 9.9% was up only 1 percentage point year-on-year, the absolute increase averaged 69.0GB per subscriber, compared with a 57.0GB increase from 4Q2023 to 4Q2024.
