Telecoms.com

US broadband homes are increasingly choosing to place their router in the living room rather than home office in order to better serve their connected video devices, according to The Diffusion Group.

Over four in five US broadband households now have home networks installed – up a few percentage points from 2011 – with over a third of routers now found in ‘primary living spaces’ – nearly twice the number found in spaces dedicated to home offices.

Michael Greeson, founding partner of The Diffusion Group, observes that just a few years ago, network use was dominated by data-centric activities (email, messaging, productivity applications, etc.), with few consumers actually using their home networks to access and share digital media.

“Today, however, 62 per cent of networked households are using their network to stream digital media,” adds Greeson.

TDG believes that both router placement and primary use are highly correlated with age: the younger the head-of-household, the more likely it is that the router is located in the primary living space, and that the network is used to stream digital media.

According to TDG’s data, nearly eight in ten Millennials (aged 18 to 34 years old) use their home networks to stream media, a rate that also declines as age increases.