It might be a little surprising to read that the average US broadband home has a full dozen connected devices, but it’s more surprising to see where that number is projected to be in less than 5 years.
By 2025, Parks Associates says, the average US home with broadband will have 20 internet connected devices. That sounds like an extreme number at first, but if you figure a family with two kids might have four TVs, a cell phone for each person, a couple of laptops and tablets, a video game console, a smart speaker or two and a smart light switch or two, you’re almost at that number.
What does this have to do with streaming? A lot actually.
“The number of connected devices in the home is increasing just as people are adding strain to the home network with more work-at-home and video streaming activities,” as Brad Russell, research director at Parks Associates put it. A bad wi-fi connection can be pretty frustrating, and if you have a lot of devices connected, streaming video quality will be one of the first things to suffer.
To help head off the problem, there’s a good chance you’ll start to see internet providers start offering more home wi-fi management options, with the ability to easily turn on and off connections. It’s also likely you’ll start to see streaming services make it easier to manage data consumption – like taking the kid’s tablet video quality down a notch with a click.
Especially in more rural parts of the country where the fastest internet speeds are a fraction of what’s available in more populated areas, expect home internet connection fatigue to become more and more real.
This study was conducted by Parks Associates, a company that specializes in analytics regarding emerging consumer technologies. Specific information about the demographics for this study wasn’t given.
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