What If Nobody Had Broadband Access?

Consumers haven’t given up on home broadband connections yet, but a striking trend is emerging. An ever-growing group of Americans only access the internet via their smartphone.

28% of Americans age 18-29 and 24% of those age 30-49 years old do not have high speed connections at home. Overall, 20% of consumers are cellphone-only internet users, up from 12% two years ago.

Several forces are driving this trend. First, a greater percentage of people now have smartphones, and some “skipped” the step of having high speed access at home. Second, a number of Americans who previously had broadband have abandoned it; the percent with connections has actually declined slightly since 2015.

Smartphone-only internet users tend to be younger, less educated, lower income and non-Caucasian. To some extent this signals they may tend to have lower socioeconomic status. However, the data is conflated by the fact that many 18-29 year olds are still in school, working part-time or not at all.

Stay tuned as this trend develops because it could have powerful implications. There is a significant difference between marketing to consumers who are smartphone first vs smartphone only.

Sources: Engadget 2018, Pew Research Center 2018, Telecompetitor 2018