Americas Broadband Roundup, 2025

• Peru has the fastest-growing fixed-broadband market among the countries in this study, expanding at a 11% compound average annual rate (CAGR) between 2020 and 2024, followed by Brazil (8%) and Mexico (6%).
• One in 10 of all the 237 million residential broadband customers in this eight country review were paying US-based Comcast Corp. (12%).
• The surprising growth in fixed wireless in the US is expected to remain a North American trend for now as many nations struggle with wireless spectrum scarcity.

The top eight residential fixed broadband markets in continental America rely on a mix of technology platforms, with fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) taking the lead in Latin America and Caribbean and cable (including hybrid fiber-coax) remaining strong in user preferences in both Canada and the USA. In the US, fixed wireless access (FWA) connections are having a major impact.

The US had the largest residential fixed broadband market among the eight countries surveyed in this report at year-end 2024, with 120.6 million subscriptions. The country with the next-largest fixed broadband subscriber count, Brazil, had less than half that number, with 45.7 million subscriptions.

These countries are all in different stages of broadband development. While the more developed economies of the US and Canada have penetration levels (fixed broadband subscriptions as a share of households) approaching 100%, with Canada at 96% and the US at 91% as of 2024, others such as Peru (38%) and Colombia (46%) are playing catch-up, with Argentina and Chile in the middle at 73%.

The whole of the Latin America and Caribbean region ended 2024 with close to 55% market penetration, or 116.1 million residential subscriptions.

This report's six Latin American countries represent 86% of total Latin American residential fixed broadband subscriptions. As of 2024, about 75% (237 million) of all 315 million homes in these top eight countries had fixed high-speed internet.

The US and Canada, nearing penetration levels of 100%, are showing slower growth than others in the middle of expansion. The US ended the four years to 2024 with a 2.6% CAGR for its total residential fixed broadband market and it is expected to continue to grow at a slower pace moving forward. Canada grew at an annual rate of 3.2% between 2020 and 2024, and it is also expected to decelerate.

In contrast, Peru's total residential fixed broadband market grew at an accelerated CAGR of 10.5% between 2020 and 2024. We anticipate its growth rate will remain strong relative to other countries as its penetration rate catches up. Brazil is the second-fastest-growing market in this report, with nearly 8% annualized subscription growth between 2020 and 2024.

Cable connections dominated in both the US (62%) and Canada (47%) at year-end 2024, and that dominance is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. However, Argentina, with nearly 51% cable market participation in 2024, is expected to see FTTH emerge as the largest platform in the future.

FTTH is the fastest-growing technology across the Latin American markets sampled in this report. In 2024, the platform already had over 78% market share in Brazil, the largest Latin American market, along with 73% of Chile’s subscriptions and 66% of Mexico's. FTTH is expected to continue its march toward ranking as the leading technological platform in Latin America’s main countries in the future. By contrast, FTTH is expected to remain behind cable in the US and Canada by 2031.

Fixed wireless access, or FWA, has gained strength as an emergent technology in the US. The platform, which hasn’t had much success elsewhere, grew at an astounding 65% annually between 2020 and 2024, and our forecast points to it approaching nearly a fifth of the US market by 2031.

Residential broadband revenue and ARPU

Residential broadband revenue across all eight countries totaled close to $129 billion in 2024, nearly the size of Kenya’s annual gross domestic product.

Broadband is becoming a necessity for most households, and utilities generally have inelastic pricing power. Although mobile substitution (households using only smartphones for home internet) challenges this assumption, for now, we anticipate that broadband has years of growth ahead.

While the US and Canada combined account for about 58% of broadband customers across all eight countries in 2024, about 84% of the revenue comes from the US and Canada alone.

That overweight revenue share relative to subscribers is due to higher monthly average revenue per user in the US and Canada.

At $68 per month and $53 per month in 2024, the US and Canada charge multiples above the other six countries' average monthly prices for residential broadband: from $23 in Peru to $12 in Argentina.

Cable broadband by country

Despite the preference FTTH has gained in the Americas' fixed broadband markets, cable, including hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC), remained a leading technology in at least three of the top eight countries, with the most residential subscribers at the end of 2024: the US, Canada, and Argentina. During this period, two other countries — Mexico and Brazil — reported notable figures for the platform, but the other three — Perú, Colombia and Chile — seem to be dropping it, with numbers that barely surpass 1 million households.

Overall, these top eight fixed residential broadband markets reported a total of 106.7 million residential cable subscribers in 2024, representing a 2% decline from 2023.

Cable subs have been declining in the Americas since 2020, according to our records. Leading Canadian operators also include some fiber and FWA subscribers in their broadband figures, but we assume the majority of broadband subscribers in the market receive cable broadband service. The decline in cable broadband subscribers is relatively low, however, compared to other technologies that optical fiber is displacing, especially in Latin America. Cable’s relatively sturdy position is mainly due to its US predominance at 75 million residential subscribers in 2024, followed by Brazil with 7.8 million, Canada with 7.6 million, Mexico with 6.9 million and Argentina with 6.0 million.

The countries where cable broadband held the biggest share of the market in 2024 were the US with 62%, Argentina with 51%, and Canada with 47%.

Fiber broadband by country

Latin American markets had more subscribers to fiber than to any other broadband technology, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence estimates. The six Latin American countries we reviewed had about 67% of their residential subscribers on an FTTH platform.

Among the eight nations, Brazil had the highest fiber adoption across its residential users, at over 78% as of the year-end 2024. This was nearly 1,200 basis points higher than the aggregated fiber adoption for all of Latin America. Government programs, such as WiFi Brasil, FUST and the National Broadband Plan (PNBL), primarily drove efforts to bridge the digital divide. Smaller ISPs, unlike Telefónica SA, Claro SA and Oi SA, were also highly competitive in laying out fiber route miles.

Chile trailed behind Brazil, with the former achieving 73.3% fiber adoption among residential users. DSL had been largely phased out in Chile, with only about 13,000 subscriptions remaining in 2024. Dominant players like Telefónica are prioritizing the migration to fiber from cable and DSL as data usage grows in the Chilean market.

In contrast, North American broadband subscribers are mostly served by cable broadband, with only slightly over 21% of residential subs on a fiber connection in 2024. In the US and Canada, the 1980s' aggressive cable TV expansion provided a head start for operators to reuse coax for two-way internet service in the late 1990s. Both nations had cable infrastructure largely in place, which yielded top operators like Comcast, Time Warner (now Charter Communications Inc.), Rogers Communications Inc. and others more revenue-generating units through bundling internet packages with TV and telephony services. But the tides are starting to turn on cable. Intense competition has brought cable’s subscriber growth to a grinding halt as consumers prefer the faster fiber packages or the readily available and, in some cases, competitively priced fixed wireless and low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite options.

The market with the fewest cable broadband households at the end of 2024 was Chile with 1.09 million subscriptions, followed by Peru and Colombia with 1.21 million each.

Satellite broadband by country

The US dominated the satellite mix of residential broadband subscribers within the Americas. When satellite subscriptions from all the major markets in the Americas were combined, except the US, the total amounted to 1.3 million, or 36% less than all US satellite subs (whether subscribing to geostationary or low-earth-orbit services).

Canada ranked second by subscriptions. The market ended 2024 with approximately 481,000 subscribers to satellite broadband providers. SpaceX's Starlink is expected to boost this segment. According to Starlink’s official X account, over 500,000 Canadians were connected via Starlink as of July 15, 2025 — about 100,000 more than the same period last year.

Colombia had about 352,000 satellite subscribers by the end of 2024. Colombia mainly relies on cable for broadband connectivity, but fiber is speedily catching up and should breach cable’s market share in 2028. The country’s major satellite players include Starlink (in partnership with Claro) and SES.

FWA broadband by country

The rapid expansion of fixed wireless access in the US over the last five years represents one of the broadband industry's most puzzling developments. The unique market development of T-Mobile and Verizon Communications Inc. using excess spectrum capacity to successfully launch fixed wireless broadband across the country in 2020 has surprised non-US operators, which generally equate “fixed wireless” with the unsuccessful deployment of WiMAX over 10 years ago. Regardless, the US has grown its residential FWA base sixfold from 1.6 million residential subs in 2020 to 11.6 million in 2024. One in every 10 US broadband homes uses FWA for internet access.

So far, the trend is US-specific. Mobile phone spectrum constraints in many other markets imply that similar renewed growth for fixed wireless might be elusive elsewhere. For instance, in the leading eight countries in the Americas reviewed here, we anticipate only three will grow fixed wireless customers over the next few years: the US, Canada and Colombia.