For three consecutive years, the OpenVault Broadband insights report has noted that upstream data consumption has grown faster percentage-wise than downstream, which had always defined broadband capacity planning – but not anymore, according to the latest study.
The OVBI Q2 2026 report has revealed that something fundamental has changed, with broadband reaching an inflection point. That is, the long-running divergence between upstream and downstream has become a defining story, and as downstream growth cooled to a multi-year low, upstream accelerated at its fastest pace ever.
Specifically, for the quarter ended 30 June 2026, upstream usage grew 19.2% annually, more than three times the 6.1% rate of downstream growth, taking upstream’s share of total traffic from 5.7% to 8.2%, with no sign of levelling off. Open Vault noted that over the past seven years, the ratio of downstream to upstream consumption has fallen 32.5%, from 16.6:1 in 2Q 2019 to 11.2:1.
The report observed that downstream usage has traditionally tracked video streaming growth, whereas multiple factors are compounding upstream growth. Indeed, the key drivers for upstream growth were structural: cloud synchronisation, always-on connected devices and a new layer of artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted workflows that are said to treat the upload channel as a first-class path and create a persistent return-path load.
Among the key general findings for the report was that average monthly usage was 711GB per subscriber, an increase of 7.1% over the 664.2 GB recorded in the second quarter of 2025.
Median monthly usage of 482.3GB represented an 11.8% increase over the 431.4GB of the second quarter of 2025, indicating, said Open Vault, a broadening of consumption across the subscriber base.
Looking at specific technologies, the report noted that Docsis upstream speed continued to rise sharply towards new milestones. Average upstream speed in the second quarter was 47.8Mbps, a 33.7% increase over the prior year.
Another key Docsis trend was that the median was closing on the average. The median-to-average ratio hit a record 0.68, and the typical household usage has compounded faster (18.8%/yr) than the average (14.8%/yr).
By contrast, fibre upstream Average Usage of 94.1GB per subscriber was 61.6% greater than Docsis upstream consumption (58.2GB), continuing a trend of significantly higher fibre upstream traffic. Across every metric – monthly, hourly and peak – fibre subscribers consumed 60-75% more upstream bandwidth.
The report’s roster of ‘Super Power’ users – those consuming 2TB per month or more – rose to almost 6% (5.86%) of all subscribers, a 16.1% year-on-year increase. 1TB usage was found to be going mainstream: nearly a quarter of Docsis subscribers now exceed 1TB per month, up from about one in 25 in 2019. That is from 4.1% to 23.5%.
The report also revealed that the higher the tier, the greater the growth. The 5TB+ extreme tier expanded around nine times faster than the >250GB tier in 2026.
Looking ahead, the report showed that upstream growth will likely increase as broadband operators prioritise its headroom to accommodate increasing traffic. That meant return path capacity, long treated as secondary, must be freed from performance constraints.
