Study: 1 in 5 US households are using mobile-only internet, ditching wired broadband, compared to 1 in 10 in 2013
New data: Americans are abandoning wired home Internet — For the most part, America's Internet usage trends can be summed up in a few phrases.
Context & Ripple Effects
The 1-in-5 mobile-only figure doubles a slide that was already visible in Pew's late-2015 survey, which found home broadband penetration down from 70% to 67% while smartphone-only connections rose from 8% to 13% — an earlier Pew round even flagged that 10% of smartphone owners had no home broadband at all.
The same substitution pattern showed up in telephony when the CDC counted cell-only households overtaking landlines in 2017, and Pew's later tracking found broadband recovering to 77% by 2021 [[a:967048]] — suggesting wired service stopped shrinking once smartphone adoption matured, but mobile-only never reversed.
First-order effects
- Every household going mobile-only moves its connectivity spend from wireline ISPs to mobile carriers, shrinking the addressable home-broadband market during the exact window Pew measured it falling.
- Smartphone-only users become wholly dependent on carrier networks and data plans, making mobile coverage, speed, and caps their de facto broadband experience.
Second-order effects
- Mobile carriers gain pricing power over a segment with no wired fallback, while wireline providers must defend the remaining base with bundles and pricing rather than counting on organic growth.
- Service design and measurement follow the users: adoption trackers like Pew and the CDC shift from asking whether homes have broadband to how adequate a phone-only connection is.
Third-order effects
- The durable divide stops being access versus no-access and becomes quality of connection — consistent with Pew's 2021 finding that 30% of users report connectivity issues even as subscription rates climb.
- If the pattern holds, US connectivity policy and industry structure organize around wireless carriers as the primary onramp, with fixed broadband positioned as a premium complement rather than the default.
The trend: US internet access is migrating from wired home connections toward smartphone-only use, with fixed broadband settling into a smaller, complementary role.