CTIA - The Wireless Association

Over the past year America’s spectrum policy faced an unprecedented set of challenges that jeopardize America’s 5G leadership and Americans’ ability to reap all of the economic and geopolitical benefits of a dynamic mobile broadband network and the ecosystems it supports. To overcome those challenges, 2024 must be a year of action for US policymakers if we are to maintain our global competitiveness, meet rapidly increasing consumer demand, and drive the innovation and growth we all want in the United States. Specifically, America’s wireless future hinges on:

Umair Javed has joined CTIA-The Wireless Association as Senior Vice President, Spectrum. In this capacity, Javed will shape and coordinate the organization’s spectrum advocacy. Javed comes to CTIA from the Federal Communications Commission. As Chief Counsel, he played a central role in shaping our nation’s spectrum policy. During his tenure, Javed helped focus the agency on identifying mid-band spectrum for 5G, oversaw one of the most successful auctions in US history, and launched the FCC’s Spectrum Coordination Initiative to enhance partnerships between agencies and the private sector.

CTIA’s annual survey of key industry metrics finds that wireless networks support more data traffic than ever:

Mobile data demand is exploding, with aggregate data downloaded quadrupling in the last seven years. New and innovative uses enabled by 5G, as well as the prospect of 6G applications, point towards further increases in expected demand for mobile network capacity.

Mobile data usage is at least 96 times higher today than it was just 10 years ago, according to a new report about US wireless industry growth from industry association CTIA. Annual mobile data consumption jumped from 388 billion megabytes (MB) in 2010 to 37.06 trillion MB in 2019. In 2020, the average smartphone user consumed 9.2 GB per month, up from 6.6 GB per month in 2019.

Nearly 17 million new US jobs (16.7 million) were created during the nine-year period when 4G wireless networks were deployed and became a key driver of the US economy. At the beginning of the 4G era in 2011, 3.7 million jobs were connected to the wireless industry – a number that rose to 20.4 million by 2019. Overall, the US wireless industry gross domestic product (GDP) grew 253% to $690.5 billion between 2011 and 2019. Experts expect the industry’s GDP to increase by 126% between 2011 and 2019 to $441.8 billion. But instead, wireless GDP hit $690.5 billion in 2019.

CTIA’s Annual Wireless Industry Survey finds the industry beginning the transition from 4G to 5G wireless networks with significant growth in cell sites and data-only devices. That growth and continued demand for everything wireless contributed to Americans using an unprecedented amount of mobile data in 2017. The key wireless trends in this year's survey:

This paper provides an analysis of the economic effects of two related pricing practices commonly employed by providers of mobile broadband services that are often referred to as data caps and free data services.

I believe that these practices largely represent efficient carrier responses to competitive pressures, technical realities, and consumer preferences, and should be trusted over the predictive judgements of regulators when it comes to maximizing consumer welfare. Proposals to ban or severely restrict the use of data caps or free data plans would essentially amount to the imposition of a form of price regulation on a well-functioning competitively vibrant industry, and would do more harm than good.

[Rogerson is the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Market Economics at Northwestern University]