Here’s bad news for the wireline broadband and home network industries: Americans are moving rapidly away from wireline broadband to wireless mobile broadband services, according to the US Census Bureau’s Computer and Internet Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS), which includes data collected in July 2015 from nearly 53,000 households for NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration) – part of the US Commerce Department.
The report said mobile broadband services are competing more directly with wireline broadband services. The NTIA said “the findings suggest that technological changes are driving a profound shift in how Americans use the internet, which may be opening a new digital divide based on the use of particular types of devices and Internet services.”
Three-quarters of American residences using the internet at home in 2015 still used wireline broadband services for high-speed internet service, including cablecos, phone companies and all-fiber services. But, and it’s a big but, wireline broadband in homes had dropped from 82% of online households in July 2013 to 75% in two years. Simultaneously, the proportion of online residences that relied exclusively on mobile service doubled between 2013 and 2015, from 10% to 20%. The increase in online households that reported only using wireless broadband service has come at the expense of the wireline broadband services. That is true across all demographics – US residences have become more likely to rely on mobile broadband services.
There are differences within demographics, however. Low-income broadband households were significantly more likely to depend solely on a mobile data plan than those with higher incomes. The report showed that 29% of broadband households whose family incomes were $25,000 used only mobile broadband at home, compared with 15% of households with incomes of $100,000 or more.
Yes, wireline broadband is still the preferred means of connecting at home by those most likely to be able to afford it; the use of mobile broadband is becoming more popular across all demographics. It’s worth pointing out that the report said 27% of American households still do not use any broadband services at home.
The government report also said Americans are increasingly using a wide range of devices to meet their computing needs: with smartphones increasing in the breakdown from 45% in 2013 to 53% in 2015 – ahead of laptops and of desktops, to become the most popular devices for connecting to the internet. Tablets increased from 22% to 29% in 2015, smart TVs increased from 18% to 27% in 2015 (including smart TV devices like Roku), while laptops decreased slightly from 47% to 46%, and wearables were unsurprisingly only 1% of the total.
The report also highlights a major change by US residents: the increasing number of devices used to connect to the internet. It found that 57% of Americans used at least two types of internet-connected devices in 2015, up from 52% in 2013, and 37% said they used at least three different types of devices in 2015, up from 32% in 2013.
This first ran in Rider Research’s Online Reporter.