A new report from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration reflects the fact that Americans have been rapidly adopting mobile broadband use.
NTIA’s report “confirms skyrocketing demand for devices that allow users to access Internet applications nearly anywhere,” according to Lawrence Strickling, who is assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information at NTIA. The report is based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau collected in late 2012, and involves more than 53,000 U.S. households.
The data itself is no surprise to the mobile industry, which has seen exploding data use for years now, but it does put some official census numbers to mobile usage and also has some stats to reflect mobile technology’s role in narrowing the so-called “digital divide” between well-off households and those of lower socio-economic status. For instance, the report found that among households with family incomes below $25,000 per year, mobile phone use grew from 73% to 77% and among disabled Americas, mobile phone use increased from 68% to 72% – both reflecting increases of 4%. The census data saw the same amount of increase of mobile phone use by senior 65 and older, from 68% to 72%.
Interestingly, mobile phone use disparities between whites and minorities “appeared to nearly vanish” from 2011 to 2012, according to the NTIA report. Although affluent mobile phone users and people with college degrees were found to use their phones for more than voice usage – for checking e-mails, for example – the report found that overall mobile usage in 2012 was conducted by 88% of whites and 87% of African Americans and Hispanics. Mobile phone usage among Americans living in rural areas, meanwhile, was at 85%, up 5% from 2011 to 2012.
Other findings included:
- Sixty-three percent of users with family incomes of more than $100,000 used their devices for e-mail, compared to 27% of users with household incomes of less than $25,00. This reflects a 36% gap.
- The total number of Americans accessing the Internet on any device grew 18% from 151 million in 2007, to 187 million in 2012. This figure was adjusted for population growth, according to NTIA.
- Mobile phone use among urban residents grew from 86% to 88%, which was the same increase as in the overall use of mobile phones among all Americans who were ages 25 or older.
- Fifty-seven percent of college graduates with mobile phones used those devices to check e-mail, compared to 19% of mobile phone users without a high school diploma.
- Broadband adoption at home increased from 69% in 2011 to 72% in 2012.
- Twenty-eight percent of households did not have broadband access at home. Of those, nearly half said they weren’t interested or didn’t need it, and another 29% said that they couldn’t afford the price of home Internet service.
Read the NTIA’s Exploring the Digital Nation: Embracing the Mobile Internet report here.
