A recent survey by Pew Research shows that in 2025, 16% of Americans used a smartphone as their only source of broadband. The percentage has grown a bit over previous surveys. I’ve seen articles in the popular press that tout this, and similar surveys, as proof that young people find cellphones to be equivalent to home broadband. These articles imply that, as today’s youth become a bigger segment of the population, broadband will wane in popularity.

Anybody who is touting this idea didn’t take a very hard look at the Pew survey results. A deeper look at the survey results shows that the percentage of people relying on a cellphone as the only source of broadband varies by household income. 34% of people with household income under $30,000 use a cellphone as the only source of broadband, while only 4% of people with a household income over $100,000 choose a cellphone as the only source of broadband. The survey shows that as household income climbs, a greater percentage of households subscribe to broadband. It’s not hard to infer that most of those who live in homes with incomes under $30,000 would choose to buy home broadband if they could afford it.

This is not to say that there are not people who choose to use a cellphone as the only source of broadband. This might include people who are light broadband users and don’t need a lot of data per month. It’s likely that cellphone-only subscribers don’t watch much video or play games using a cellular data plan. But the survey suggests this might be something in the range of 4% of households.

It’s likely that a lot of the people who use a cellphone for broadband have access to WiFi from other broadband connections – at work, school, or other places that offer free WiFi access. We can infer this by comparing the average monthly data usage on cellphones versus home broadband connections.

OpenVault publishes statistics every quarter showing the average broadband usage for homes and small businesses. At the end of 2025, the average U.S. broadband customer used 767.4 gigabytes of data per month, which was 711.5 gigabytes of download data and 55.9 gigabytes of upload data. Average data usage has been climbing steadily every year, and the average household used 69 more gigabytes of data per month at the end of 2025 than they used at the end of 2024.

Contrast this with the average cellphone customer who consumes an average of around 23 gigabytes of cellular data per month from the cellular network. Cellphone plans don’t support the kind of data used by the average household, and most plans, even those touted as “unlimited”, are capped or have restricted speeds after reaching around 50 gigabytes of data usage in a month. The chances are high that the average cellphone user consumes a lot more data than the national average of 23 gigabytes per month, with the extra usage coming from connections to broadband-backed WiFi. Several recent surveys show that the average cell phone user in the country uses their cellphone for over 5 hours per day. They are not spending that much time connected to cellular data.

There are other reasons why a cellphone is not a substitute for a broadband connection. A cellphone data plan is not adequate to support a household with multiple broadband users. A cellphone data plan can’t support somebody working or schooling from home. Try writing a term paper or creating a complex spreadsheet on a cellphone. While a cellphone can be tethered to a computer or other device for these kinds of functions, most cellphone plans cap the amount of tethered usage to 20 gigabytes per month or less. The average home broadband connection uses more data in the average day than what most cellphone users consume from the cellular networks in a month.

The Pew survey demonstrates a strong relationship between income and broadband usage. A lot of people from low-income households choose a smartphone as the only source of broadband because they can’t afford both the cellphone and the home broadband connection. It’s fully understandable why somebody would choose a cellphone if they can only afford one connection. There is a lot of value in the mobility function of a smartphone that can provide voice and broadband from anywhere. But as household incomes rise, the Pew survey shows an increasing number of homes choose to buy both a smartphone and a broadband connection.