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If you work remotely for all or part of your working week, you know how crucial good broadband connectivity is. It’s a cornerstone of modern living, essential for both personal and professional life. Without it, tasks such as browsing the internet, streaming videos, or attending virtual meetings immediately become a challenge.
Remote workers, in particular, suffer when connectivity is poor, facing dropped calls and disrupted video meetings, leading to frustration and reduced productivity. According to one report, remote employees can waste up to 30 minutes a day—equating to 130 hours a year—due to poor internet quality.
For years, consumers chose their broadband service based on one primary factor: speed. This was the way internet service providers (ISPs) marketed themselves, equating faster speeds with better service. However, as internet connectivity has become nearly ubiquitous, speed alone is no longer enough to sway users toward a particular ISP.
One survey of broadband users in seven European markets reveals a shift in priorities: approximately 34 percent of respondents cited “high reliability and stability” as the most important factor in choosing an ISP, just ahead of “an attractive price” (32 percent). By contrast, fewer than 10 percent of those surveyed said that either download or upload speed was their main priority.
A New Metric to Better Judge Network Experience
Analytics company Opensignal was founded on the idea that measuring consumers’ direct experience with connectivity would provide carriers with more accurate insight into their network performance. It identified that speed was not a predictor of a quality experience and developed a new way of measuring that experience: its Broadband Reliability Experience (BRE) metric. Launching it earlier this year, Opensignal became the first company to measure users’ real-world experience of broadband in this way.
Opensignal’s BRE metric comprises three components, which are combined to give a score of between 100-1,000, with higher marks indicating a more reliable and stable experience. These components are:
Connectivity: Opensignal measures how easy it is for households to connect to the internet. This component of the metric captures the proportion of time households are without internet access.
Completion: This measures the ability to complete everyday tasks, such as streaming video, browsing the web, or scrolling through social media.
Sufficiency: This looks at whether a task is performed “sufficiently well.”
Importantly, the BRE metric assesses the experience of typical households with multiple connected devices; the average US home now has no fewer than 17. It reflects the common scenario where, for example, one person is in a work meeting while others are online doing homework, listening to music, playing video games, or shopping. Understandably, all members of the household want a stable, reliable connection without buffering, lag, or dropped connections—and having superfast speed is only one component in the ability to deliver that experience.
When defining its BRE metric, Opensignal looked at the download speeds needed to fulfill the typical tasks carried out by most users—not activities like cloud gaming that require faster speeds but are only relevant to a minority of users.
The Last Mile of Connection Matters
Several other elements impact the BRE Among them is the technology used to deliver broadband to end users—whether the fiber service is carried directly to the home or premises (FTTH/FTTP) or over fiber to the curb or cabinet (FTTC) with the final connection made via copper or coaxial cable, Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), or satellite. The end user’s Wi-Fi router age and configuration, as well as the package they buy from their ISP, also influence the reliability experience.
And while common sense suggests that fiber should deliver a superior reliability experience to other technologies, this isn’t necessarily the case. Spain has invested significantly in FTTH, and is the European leader, with 80 percent of homes now connected this way. Looking purely through the lens of speed, this investment has paid off, as the country took the European Number 2 spot when ranked by broadband download speed. Yet, in Opensignal’s recent BRE report “Bridging the digital divide: unlocking reliable broadband for all,” Spain landed in the 10th position out of the 18 countries analyzed, giving it only a “moderate reliability” ranking. This result highlights how using speed alone as a measure misses other important drivers of quality.
Metrics That Actually Matter
Opensignal’s BRE metric shifts the focus from speed to a more holistic measure of internet quality, reflecting how people use the internet in their everyday lives. Its Fixed Broadband reports, which now include a BRE score, provide valuable insights into which ISPs can deliver the stable, reliable service that millions of internet users need, especially in an era where remote work is the norm. The message is clear: in a world where staying connected is non-negotiable, reliability is king.
To learn more about Opensignal’s Broadband Reliability Experience, read its report, which uses its new metric to assess reliability in 18 markets around the world: “Bridging the Digital Divide: Unlocking Reliable Broadband for All.”
By Sylwia Kechiche, Senior Director, Industry Analysis, Opensignal
