Bombshell report: Mobile data consumption over Wi-Fi closes in on 90% in the US

By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman

We’ve known for more than a decade that Wi-Fi carries by far the lion’s share of smartphone traffic nearly everywhere across the globe – but now finally we have fresh numbers at least for the US: Wi-Fi’s proportion of data traffic on smartphones is now closing in on a staggering 90% overall and even exceeds (in nearly all cases) 80% away from home. We suspected as much but OpenSignal’s report just released confirms it.?

We’ve always said that Wi-Fi is the world’s hands-down most important connectivity technology and arguably also the most successful technology of all time of any kind. Now fresh data from OpenSignal confirms this: We’re in uncharted waters as Wi-Fi gobbles up an even bigger share of smartphone traffic than suspected. Wi-Fi’s share of data is remarkably uniform across all US carriers ranging from 82-89% with slightly more Wi-Fi usage among cableco mobile subscribers Xfinity Mobile and Spectrum Mobile.

Here’s the history: Spectrum Mobile (Charter) recently indicated that the Wi-Fi data share among their subscribers is around 80% – so either that value was a conservative estimate or the proportion is growing. During the 4G era the consensus was that Wi-Fi carried perhaps 60-70% of the traffic in the US although we know that the value from the UK during that period was in excess of 80% (read more here).

What’s even more telling in the report is that smartphone usage outside the home also represents close to or more than 80% of total traffic (with T-Mobile as the notable outlier, which would seem to indicate that T-Mobile’s coverage is measurably better than that of the competition).

What we might conclude from the numbers

The report should give food for thought for everyone across the telco and IT industries and – not least – regulators. For example: It is clear that in terms of data delivery, Wi-Fi has scored a huge win and continues to grow its share while 5G has fallen short of expectations. So much for ‘5G outcompeting Wi-Fi’, which was one of many absurd claims coming from the cellular industry in the early 5G era.

It is also remarkable that the appetite for Wi-Fi data consumption is only about 10% less when away from home. In other words: On average Wi-Fi is preferred over 5G by a huge margin no matter where the subscriber happens to be (but of course predominantly indoors). From this we may reasonable conclude that Wi-Fi might lead by an even bigger margin if other autoconnect technologies (such as Passpoint) and associated services were more widely available to deliver indoor mobile connectivity based on Wi-Fi.

We can also conclude that the ‘offload’ (or convergence) strategies of Spectrum Mobile and Xfinity Mobile are working. On average the two cableco MVNOs are successfully using intelligent connectivity apps and other technology components to drive about 5% more traffic to their own (Wi-Fi) networks compared to the competition. The result is of course that they need to spend less dollars on buying bulk airtime from the mobile carriers.

So what should regulators conclude from these numbers? Mobile operators have spent countless billions of dollars on 5G spectrum licenses – but their share of traffic is dropping to a technology that requires no license at all. Clearly cellular services are required for ubiquitous coverage, which is still immensely important. It is an open question however wether wide swaths of licensed spectrum are still required for connectivity capacity.

Finally a shoutout to the Wi-Fi industry in general: We’re winning, folks. Everyone across the ecosystem from chipsets to service providers and everyone in between should be immensely proud of their work and they deserve enormous recognition. The results are simply remarkable and one for the history books. We will no doubt see Wi-Fi playing an even more important role in coming years as Wi-Fi 7 and future technologies roll out.

/Claus.