CTIA: US mobile data traffic increased 26 percent in 2014, but growth rate falls sharply from 2014

Americans continue to guzzle more wireless data, but data traffic is not increasing at the rapid rate it once was, according to a new report from CTIA. The report also found that wireless service revenue fell in the US in 2014; service revenue had increased every year since 2000 before 2014, the trade group's report said.

In its annual report on the state of the industry, the lobbying group for US carriers said that US wireless providers handled more than 4.06 trillion megabytes of mobile data traffic, up around 26 percent from 3.23 trillion megabytes of data traffic in 2013. However, while data traffic is still growing, the growth is slowing, as CTIA has reported 2014 that data traffic increased 120 percent in 2013. In 2012, CTIA reported that participating wireless carriers reported handling 1.47 trillion MB of data, which was up 69.3 percent from 2011. CTIA said that total reported service revenues fell 0.7 percent year-over-year in 2014 to $187.8 billion, down from $189.2 billion in 2013. Service revenues likely fell in 2014 for several reasons.