The idea of using your mobile phone as your only source of internet connectivity sounds exciting and appealing to everyone. This option for your communication device brings plenty of advantages. The people will be able to save money from their home internet bills and other household expenditures.
Instead of paying a monthly home internet fee, you can tether your laptop or television to your phone through its mobile internet.
However, this will be made possible if you have a stronger internet source, like having a 5G at home, to give you unlimited data.
If your place doesn’t have 5G capabilities yet, this plan will not be smoothly realized. Having regular LTE cell phone internet plans can’t provide sufficient data and speed for gaming or streaming activities.
Using a mobile phone for home internet can work for a bit, like when you are traveling or moving around. It is also an excellent choice for small data usage.
Kristin Cooke, a tech-writer for Satellite Internet, said that “using a mobile hotspot for home internet can work well for people with very light internet use.”
“If you just use the internet at home to check email, shop online, and browse the internet, it might be a good idea for you,” said Cooke, who pushed for affordable internet and rural internet solutions. “Maybe you primarily use your phone for internet, and you only crack open the old laptop occasionally. A mobile hotspot could be a good option for you if you fit into this category,” added the veteran tech-writer. While mobile internet advantages are easily seen among mobile users, Cooke warned that mobile phone internet would not be that dependable for TV and movie watching.
“People who work from home uploading or emailing large files will also be frustrated by the limitations of a mobile hotspot,” Cooke wrote.
The proposition that man can get by using mobile internet also finds an ally with American author and political scientist Darrell West. “Mobile broadband is reshaping society, communications, and the global economy. With smart phone usage surpassing that of personal computers, there has been a sea change in the way consumers access and share information,” said West, the vice president and director of governance studies and a senior fellow of the center for technology innovation at the Brookings Institution.
“Powerful mobile devices and sophisticated digital applications enable users to build businesses, access financial and health care records, conduct research, and complete transactions anywhere,” West added.
In his report on “Ten Facts About Mobile Broadband,” West surmised that how the mobile economy is reshaping the global landscape.
“Both in developed and emerging markets, there are major opportunities to create jobs, and create social and economic connections. With the mobile industry generating $1.3 trillion in revenues, it is important to understand how telephony is affecting the way people relate to one another,” West said.
Citing a previous study by the Pew Research Center, West said more than one-third of Americans own smartphones and use them for a wide range of services. According to the research, 83 percent of American adults own a cellphone and 35 percent of all adults own a smartphone. “When asked whether they used various services, smartphone owners indicated that they employed it to send or receive text messages (92 percent), take a picture (92 percent), or access the Internet (84 percent),” the report said.
“Mobile telephony has become especially pronounced in emerging markets. Many developing countries have skipped the landline and desktop computer stages of information technology. Rather than progressing from mainframes to desktops to laptops to tablets to smartphones, they have jumped directly to mobile broadband,” West said. According to another tech-writer Chris Neiger, the increased usage of mobile phone internet usage continues to grow.
“Investors looking for carriers that are on the cutting edge need to consider how quickly the companies are building out their networks, and how much capacity they can handle. Even with some future mobile traffic being offloaded onto to Wi-Fi networks, the big winners will still be the carriers that can handle massive amounts of data for the most users,” Neiger said. CNBC’s Lucy Handley also reported that “almost three quarters (72.6 percent) of internet users will access the web solely via their smartphones by 2025, equivalent to nearly 3.7 billion people.”
Citing a report by World Advertising Research Center (WARC), using data from mobile trade body GSMA, it said that more than 1.3 billion are forecast to access the internet via smartphone and PC by 2025.
According to the report, 69 million will access the internet via PC only.
“WARC estimates that around 2 billion people currently access the internet via only their smartphone, which equates to 51 percent of the global base of 3.9 mobile users,” Handley reported. Judging by this number, it is now a reality that more people can now manage to live, work, and communicate with only using the innovative and exciting internet connectivity via a mobile phone.
As 5G, or fifth-generation technology, continued its rollout, it is also expected that download speeds would become faster and easier, thereby making videos easy to watch even using only the smartphone.
“Advertisers will be able to reach this audience with high-quality … advertising across a near-constant connection,” WARC’s report said.
According to Handley, the time spent on smartphones is set to overtake the hours spent on accessing the internet from PCs. “People are forecast to spend three hours 22 minutes on their smartphone every day this year, beating time spent online via a PC, laptop or tablet for the first time, which is set to fall to three hours 19 minutes, down nine minutes on 2018,” Handley wrote.
As information sharing, communication and entertainment evolved nowadays, mobile devices have become a regular fixture of daily life for many people around the globe. Statista reported that the number of unique mobile internet users stood at 4.28 billion in 2020 alone.
This means that more than 90 percent of the world’s internet population use a mobile device to go online.
“Mobile ownership and internet usage are forecast to increase in the future, as mobile technologies are becoming more affordable and available than ever. This upward trend in mobile internet adoption is particularly visible in developing digital markets where mobile networks are the primary means of internet access,” Statista said.
“Today, mobile internet traffic accounts for more than 55 percent of total web traffic, while in mobile-first markets such as Asia and Africa, mobile connections account for an even large share of webpage views,” it added.
Media usage in an internet minute as of August 2021
Statista Research Department said there are plenty of things happen in an internet minute through the mobile phone. These mobile internet activities include sending of messages, e-mails, texts, uploading, video watching, and consuming mobile contents:
Google searches conducted: 5,700,000 per minute
Messages sent on Discord: 668,000 per minute
Messages sent on iMessage: 12,000,000 per minute
Rooms created on Clubhouse: 208 per minute
Snapchat messages sent: 2,000,000 per minute
USD spent by Amazon customers: 283,000 per minute
People shopping online: 6,000,000 per minute
Activities shared by Strava athletes: 1,500 per minute
USD spent by Instacart users: 67,000 per minute
Messages sent on Slack: 148,000 per minute
Minutes of webinars hosted on Zoom: 856 per minute
Users connected on Teams: 100,000 per minute
Hours streamed by Netflix users: 452,000 per minute