CTIA today released its Annual Wireless Industry Survey, which found Americans used a record 13.72 trillion megabytes (MBs) of mobile data in 2016, an increase of over 4 trillion MBs over 2015 and 35 times the volume of traffic in 2010.
The amount of data traffic sent over wireless networks in 2016 -13.72 trillion MBs – is the equivalent of 1.58 million years of streaming HD videos.
[Clip] Source: CTIA Some other key findings from this year’s survey: Data-intensive mobile devices continue to rise
Heavy traffic-generating devices, smartphones and wireless-enabled tablets and laptops, now total 309.8 million of the 395.9 million devices on carrier networks – a 238% increase since 2010. There are more wireless devices than Americans
With 395.9 million total active devices in the U.S., adoption is now equal to 120.6% of the U.S. population, or more than 1.2 wireless devices per American. Industry committed to building world-leading networks
A record 308,334 cells sites were in operation in 2016, representing a 57% growth over the last decade, thanks to over $26 billion invested in 2016 alone. Source: CTIA
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
