Analysis: DRAM and NAND memory prices have jumped 600%+ over the past year for routers and set-top boxes, hitting telcos targeting aggressive broadband rollouts
MS Hwang is a research director at Counterpoint, specializing in memory semiconductor research.
Context & Ripple Effects
This report extends a memory-cost escalation already visible when DRAM prices doubled between May and June 2025 into broadband customer-premises equipment. It matters because routers and set-top boxes are purchased at scale by operators, making component inflation a direct constraint on rollout economics.
Later coverage showed the pressure was not confined to network gear: NAND contract prices continued climbing sharply and higher DRAM costs pushed smartphone vendors toward higher-priced product mixes. The common issue is memory becoming a limiting input across mass-market connected devices.
First-order effects
- Telcos pursuing broadband expansion face higher unit costs for routers and set-top boxes, tightening the equipment budgets behind planned deployments.
- Router and set-top-box makers must absorb, renegotiate, or pass through sharply higher DRAM and NAND input costs in current supply contracts.
Second-order effects
- Operators may respond by stretching replacement cycles, revising device specifications, or reducing subsidized hardware, while vendors prioritize configurations that preserve margin.
- The same memory-cost shock across consumer devices reduces buyers’ leverage for components and makes price increases in broadband gear more difficult to isolate from wider electronics inflation.
Third-order effects
- If sustained, memory availability and pricing—not only network construction capacity—will increasingly determine the pace and design of broadband expansions.
- The pattern reinforces a memory supercycle in which semiconductor cost swings propagate from component markets into service-provider capital plans and consumer-device pricing.
The trend: Memory-cost inflation is spreading from chips into the economics and product choices of every market that ships connected hardware at scale.