There were about 90 million U.S. fixed broadband accounts in service in June 2012, and 153 million mobile broadband accounts, according to the latest report from the Federal Communications Commission.
The study shows that both mobile and fixed networks are evolving towards faster speeds, but also shows how much more nuanced the subject of broadband access has become.
Where once the issue was fixed connections to places, we now confront a mix of fixed connections to places plus many mobile connections directly to persons.
To be sure, fixed connections tend to feature higher speeds than mobile connections. But the ways people use the Internet arguably has changed, with far greater use of “on the go” Internet usage. For the most part, mobile broadband complements fixed broadband.
But perhaps seven percent of users are “mobile only” for their Internet access requirements.
The Media Behavior Institute found that mobile phone and tablet devices were reducing the the percentage of U.S. Internet users who use a computer in a given week.
The percentage of respondents using a desktop PC slipped by five percentage points between the July 2012 and January 2013.
On average, 43.5 percent of participants got access to the internet using a mobile phone each week during the period ending in January 2013, an eight-percentage-point increase over the period ending in July 2012.
Tablets grew their average weekly reach by four percentage points, used by 17 percent of participants at the end of the study period.
In the first quarter of 2013 Experian Marketing Services found that U.S. mobile Internet users spent the greatest percentage of their mobile web time using email, a 23 percent share of time spent, compared to five percent of time spent on desktop.
Social networking was the second most used app on mobile, representing 15 percent of time spent with any Internet app or service.
Travel also occupied a greater share of time on the mobile Internet (nine percent) compared with the desktop (one percent).
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