Report: 37 Million Homes to be Broadband-Only by 2022

MONTEREY, CALIF.—The next five years are going to see a surge in households making the move to be broadband-only according to media research group Kagan. An estimated 37.2 million homes are expected to become broadband-only by 2022, just shy of double what the total was in 2017, 19 million.

“A perfect storm of long-term trends including increase in streaming content suppliers, widespread utility-like status of broadband and a demographic shift attributable to shrinking baby boomers and rising millennials, is yielding higher broadband-only home gains than initially anticipated, prompting a significant upward update for our projections,” said Tony Lenoir, senior Kagan research analyst.

Homes that are broadband-only, or have a subscription to wireline broadband, are expected to increase at a 14.4 percent compound annual growth rate from 2017 to 2022. In 2022, Kagan expects 38.4 percent of the combined residential cable and telco wireline broadband subscribers to eschew legacy multichannel distribution and instead rely mostly on a combination of broadband and over-the-air broadcast signals.

An estimated 29.2 percent of U.S. homes are expected to be broadband-only in 2022, while traditional multichannel penetration will likely be in the low 60 percent range.

The full report is available upon request from Kagan parent company, S&P Global Market Intelligence.