by Rupert Bapty, Andrey Popov (authors), Francesco Rizzato (technical data)
Mobile networks are indispensable, as last year nine in ten adult Americans owned a smartphone of some kind. Despite this, our research shows that Wi-Fi networks shoulder the brunt of our users’ phone data usage, with traffic being overwhelmingly offloaded from mobile networks to Wi-Fi. Furthermore, we find that the majority of time spent browsing on smartphones by our users occurs while connected to Wi-Fi.
In this analysis, we examine the data usage patterns across five mobile service providers: three Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) — Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T — as well as two Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) — Spectrum Mobile and Xfinity Mobile. We look at the proportion of data consumption among our users across mobile and Wi-Fi connections, both at and away from the home, to examine users’ data habits.
Key Findings:
- Most smartphone data consumption occurs over Wi-Fi, but with significant differences among operators. Among users of the analyzed operators, those on the three major providers (Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T) consume more data over mobile connections, as a proportion of their total, than those on the two cable operators (Spectrum Mobile and Xfinity Mobile). T-Mobile users are leading in the share of data consumption on cellular connections.
- Even outside the home, users continue to rely heavily on Wi-Fi for data usage. Our users on T-Mobile lead with the highest mobile data usage away from home at 25%, while Xfinity Mobile users rely on Wi-Fi the most, with only 16% of their data usage occurring over a mobile connection.
- Most of the screen-on time is spent connected to Wi-Fi, both at home and away. Even away from home, our users are seen spending 77-88% of their screen-on time connected to Wi-Fi. T-Mobile and Xfinity Mobile are again at the extremes — while away from home users of Xfinity Mobile connect to Wi-Fi the most, and T-Mobile users spend the most with a mobile connection.
- The majority of Americans' smartphone usage occurs at home. Our analyzed users are spending about three times more of their screen-on time at home than away, regardless of their network. This home-to-away usage ratio is even higher for Spectrum Mobile and Xfinity Mobile users, at 3.4 and 3.3 times, respectively.
Separating our American users’ data consumption into the categories of data usage over mobile connections and data usage over Wi-Fi connections, we see that the overwhelming majority of data transfer happens over Wi-Fi. Despite the ubiquitous availability of unlimited data plans, users on average tend to heavily favor use of data-intensive tasks, and apps that require substantial downloading and uploading, over Wi-Fi.
Users are likely to connect to Wi-Fi at home and at work to benefit from better indoor signal and increased speeds. While most U.S. mobile subscribers are on unlimited plans, there are still a significant number of customers on data-capped plans, especially at the cable MVNOs. This creates an end-user incentive to switch to Wi-Fi where available.
There is a small but clear difference between the three MNOs — T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T — and the two cable MVNOs — Spectrum Mobile and Xfinity Mobile. Users proportionally consume more data over Wi-Fi on the two MVNOs, with Xfinity Mobile having the highest proportion of data consumption on Wi-Fi at 89% of their total. The MVNO percentages closely align with the figures publicly released by Xfinity Mobile (Sep 2024), and Spectrum Mobile (Jun 2023). The higher use of Wi-Fi by cable MVNO subscribers is a product of Comcast’s and Charter’s proactive Wi-Fi offload strategies. Comcast and Charter leverage their in-home Wi-Fi and extensive out-of-home Wi-Fi hotspot networks to help reduce their wholesale cellular traffic costs and improve their customers’ indoor broadband experience.
To break down data usage both at home and away from home we defined a users’ home location as the most reported location during times when users would most likely be at home — 8 p.m. - 7 a.m on weekdays or all day on weekends.
As expected our users overwhelmingly default to using Wi-Fi when at home. Both Comcast and Charter require you to subscribe to their broadband to get a mobile subscription, so these users definitionally all have high-speed cable broadband at home. This trend continues when users are outside of the home. Both home and away, T-Mobile users spend the most amount of time on mobile, which is a function of market-leading 5G Availability and speeds, and T-Mobile’s lack of public Wi-Fi hotspots and limited penetration of businesses with its fixed wireless product.
People, on average, spend a much larger part of total time interacting with their phone at home. Combining the time on mobile and time on Wi-Fi together, and distinguishing by location, we can see that around three quarters of the time our users spend using their phones is at home. The differences are slight between the different providers, with the cable MVNO users spending proportionally more on-screen time at home than away from home. The reasons for this difference are not totally clear, although it may have to do with the cable company’s historical over-indexing among higher-income families vs. lower-income singles.
While modern 5G mobile networks can offer speeds similar to high-speed fixed broadband networks, Wi-Fi still makes up the majority of users' data usage connections. Nonetheless, we do see clear differences between U.S. operators, with the cable MVNOs at one extreme of Wi-Fi offload and T-Mobile at the other extreme of more prevalent mobile network usage. As the cable MVNOs continue to grow their mobile businesses and build some limited cellular infrastructure, and T-Mobile expands deeper into the broadband market, it’s an open question whether these differences will persist over time.
To learn about the national experience of the three MNOs, please read our most recent mobile network experience report. And why not stay up-to-date with all the Opensignal insights and articles by signing up to our newsletter?
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