I’ve recently moved into a new place, and amid the excitement of unpacking, assembling flat-pack furniture incorrectly, buying an ironing board and putting furniture together the right way round, I’ve not yet signed up with a broadband provider.

I know, sounds awful. But here’s the thing: in the short-term, at least, I’ve barely noticed.

It’s a revelation that shocked news editor Nicole Kobie, but I’ve got by using my smartphone tethered to my PC along with 3’s The One Plan, which famously offers unlimited data.

The home phone has already fallen by the wayside for many people – could the router be next?

The connection isn’t remotely as fast as proper broadband, of course, but it’s fine for most things: browsing, IM, tweeting, even streaming music over Spotify. YouTube videos play, too, as long as I stick to SD – and don’t mind pre-loading some of them.

I’ve not needed to download any large files, although I don’t think I’d want to download an 8GB game on Steam for fear of 3 ringing me up and asking what on Earth I’d been doing. High-quality streams, such as BBC’s iPlayer, are also out of the question, and I can’t update my PS3, although that’s not yet stopped me playing any games.

Gaming, streaming media and large file downloads are the reasons I’ll be setting up my proper broadband as soon as possible, but many people never do any of these things with their PC – indeed, plenty of people probably do little more than browse and check their email.

It sounds odd, but many users almost certainly need little more than a smartphone or a 3G dongle to use the internet on their PCs – and that means they could forego a broadband provider altogether. Take a look at the phones available on The One Plan for less than £30 a month right now: the HTC Desire S, Samsung Galaxy Ace and Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc immediately stand out, and would instantly eliminate home broadband costs entirely.

The eventual arrival of 4G will bring better speed to mobiles. By the time that rolls around the streaming video and downloading that’s currently out of reach of smartphones and dongles might be as easy as browsing is right now.

The home phone has already fallen by the wayside for many people – could the router be next?