2024 Fiber Internet Consumer Study: Key Insights on How Fiber Tops the Charts

2024 Fiber Internet Consumer Study: Key Insights on How Fiber Tops the Charts

Since 2007, RVA Market Research and Consulting LLC and the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) have published their annual Consumer Study to gain insights into how households view and use fiber. The survey pool taps into about 3,000 to 4,000 randomly selected consumers in the U.S. and Canada, with this year’s focus on marketing strategies and augmenting fiber.

The survey traditionally includes questions on what broadband access methods they believe to be the best, along with speed tests run on subsets of users with DSL, cable, fixed and mobile wireless, satellite, and fiber. Fiber was again deemed the best internet method this year, according to 65% of those surveyed. At the same time, speed tests demonstrated that fiber-to-the-home connections delivered higher download and upload speeds, lower cost per megabit, and fewer outages.

“In every case, fiber really is better. There’s really no question about it,” said Michael Render, CEO and Principal Analyst, RVA LLC.

For those who recently changed to fiber, a set of questions asked them to rank what was most important to them when switching broadband technologies. The two most important reasons for changing were reliability and download speed at 70% and 64%, respectively. When asked the open-ended question, “What is best about fiber?” 74% of the comments related to download speed and reliability.

It also examined marketing methods for fiber, such as word of mouth and promotional flyers. It took a deep dive into how different age groups have different priorities regarding connectivity wants and needs. “Reliability is especially important to those of older age,” said Render. “Fiber is the best technology for gaming and virtual reality and so forth, [applications] most important to younger audiences.”

The Consumer Study and other research shows that the necessity for higher fiber speeds can be amplified with more education. Since the speed of the service plan directly affects the average time spent getting data to the consumer, those with gigabit and faster plans have less time wasted, while those with slower and increasing data usage encounter decreased performance over time.

The study also explores ISP market positioning strategies for fiber broadband and Net Promoter Scores (NPS), finding that fiber providers have the highest NPS scorers. Drilling down into customer satisfaction, the study finds that 55% of respondents felt it important to be able to talk to a real person / a reasonable wait time in customer service. This attribute was especially high in the 55+ demographic and considerably lower in the 18-34 age range.

For more on the RVA and FBA’s 2024 Consumer Study detailing the latest on tested fiber advantages, listen to the 200th episode of the Fiber for Breakfast podcast.

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