One more driver of wireless growth to consider: Uber drivers and gig economy

It’s a question that has baffled many minds for years. The mismatch between the U.S. population growth rate and U.S. wireless carriers’ ability to add oodles of new phone customers every quarter has mystified some Wall Street analysts for eons. “Investors have been puzzling over the industry’s ‘excess growth’ for years now,” wrote Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson Research. “Wireless is, after all, a fully saturated industry in the U.S. And yet total industry growth (not just postpaid phone, but total phone, including prepaid) has consistently been far faster than population growth. For years.” Young people getting their first phones sooner is one of the most commonly cited explanations for the excessive growth. That’s certainly real, but it can’t come close to explaining the magnitude of the gap. What if gig workers could explain some of this? After all, drivers at companies like Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, Lyft, Grubhub and other services often use second or third phones to manage their business.