CTIA’s annual wireless industry survey reveals that consumers continue to increasingly rely on wireless.

Americans’ mobile-first lifestyle means we are using more smartphones, tablets and other wireless-connected devices to communicate.

  • 70 percent of adults own a smartphone.
  • Americans exchanged more than 2.1 trillion videos, texts and photo messages last year.
  • Americans also consumed 9.6 trillion megabytes (MB) of data in 2015; more than doubling from the previous year and three times the 3.2 trillion MB used in 2013.
    • 2015’s data usage is the equivalent of streaming 59,219 videos every minute.
  • America’s wireless carriers invested almost $32 billion in 2015, adding almost 10,000 new cell sites.

About CTIA and  Mobile-First

CTIA’s wireless industry survey develops industry-wide information drawn from operational member and non-member wireless service providers. It has been conducted since January 1985, originally as a cellular-only survey instrument, and now including the community of CMRS licensees (e.g., PCS, ESMR, AWS, BRS and 700 MHz license holders). No break-out of results specific to spectrum bands or licenses is performed. From January 1985 through December 2012, it was conducted as a semi-annual survey, and it is now being conducted on an annual basis. The information determined based on the survey includes: direct employment, number of cell sites, total service revenues, the average revenue per unit (ARPU), and various measures of usage (e.g., minutes and megabytes). The ARPU figure is not equal to the average monthly bill, which may reflect provision of service to multiple devices on a single account.