67% of Americans now have broadband at home, compared to 70% in 2013, and 13% connect via smartphone only vs 8% in 2013; smartphone penetration in US at 68%
Pew Internet :
Context & Ripple Effects
Pew's December reading closes out a year of its own connectivity tracking: an April survey had already found 64% of US adults owning smartphones with one in ten of them lacking home broadband, and this release shows the trade accelerating — home broadband slipping from 70% to 67% since 2013 while smartphone-only connection rose from 8% to 13%, against 68% overall smartphone penetration.
The direction matters more than the level. A follow-up study found one in five US households already mobile-only by early 2016, and Pew's own later surveys show the shift topping out — smartphone ownership plateauing near 77% by 2018 before reaching 85% in 2021, with broadband recovering only alongside cheaper plans.
First-order effects
- Fixed-line ISPs face a shrinking addressable base of home subscribers for the first time in the series' history — the 70%-to-67% drop means roughly three percentage points of American adults left wired connections over two years.
- Mobile carriers absorb that demand directly: 13% of adults now route their entire internet usage through smartphone plans, up from 8% in 2013.
Second-order effects
- ISPs are pushed toward price competition to stop the churn — consistent with later reporting that access to broadband plans costing $60 or less jumped from 52% to 70% between 2019 and 2021.
- Content and service providers can no longer assume a persistent home connection, pushing design toward metered, mobile-first usage patterns for a meaningful minority of users.
Third-order effects
- The 2018 plateau Pew documented — internet use stuck near 89% and smartphones near 77% — suggests the substitution phase ends in saturation rather than universal wired adoption, leaving a permanently bifurcated market.
- That bifurcation feeds into the connectivity-gap politics visible in later coverage, where even among the connected 30% reported reliability problems — making affordability and quality, not just access, the structural battleground.
The trend: American connectivity is migrating from wired household broadband toward smartphone-centric access, with the crossover slowing once both curves saturate in the high 70s to mid 80s percent range.