Mobile Broadband Growth Dwarfs Fixed Access

By the end of 2011, six million U.S. households will depend on a wireless or mobile platform (including 3G or 4G) as their only means of accessing the Internet, according to Strategy Analytics. 

 That means seven percent of U.S. homes are wireless-only for broadband, up about 430,000 homes over 2010 levels. 

 These “mobile-only” customers typically connect to broadband using 3G or 4G-enabled smartphones or PC dongles, and are unable or unwilling to use a wired broadband service such as cable, DSL or fiber, Strategy Analytics says.

Nearly half of all adults (47 percent) go online with a laptop using a Wi-Fi connection or mobile broadband card (up from the 39 percent who did so as of April 2009) while 40 percent of adults use the internet, email or instant messaging on a mobile phone (up from the 32 percent of Americans who did this in 2009), the Pew Internet and American Life Project reported in 2010.

Since then, mobile Internet access has grown, especially among minority Americans.  But the trend is increasingly common, for lots of people.

When asked what device they normally use to access the internet, 25 percent of all smart phone owners say that they mostly go online using their phone, rather than with a computer.

While many of these individuals have other sources of online access at home, roughly one third of these "cell mostly" Internet users lack a high-speed home broadband connection, Pew researchers say.

In other words, about eight percent of broadband users might rely exclusively on mobile broadband (a third of the respondents who “mostly” rely on mobile broadband).