The amount of data delivered over wireless nets in 2016 was equivalent to 1.58 million years of streaming HD video.
That was one of the takeaways from the just-released Annual Wireless Industry Survey from CTIA.
Americans used a record 13.72 trillion megabytes of mobile data in 2016, up 4 trillion over 2015 (9.65 trillion) and 35 times the traffic in 2010.
“Americans are using more wireless data than ever. As wireless becomes central to our lives and the U.S. economy, it’s no surprise that Americans’ mobile data usage continues to skyrocket,” said CTIA president Meredith Attwell Baker. “This continued growth underscores the need to free up more spectrum and modernize infrastructure processes at all levels of government to make way for next-generation 5G networks - and hundreds of billions of industry investment.”
The report found that, at 395.9 million total, there are now 1.2 wireless devices for each American. Most of those—309.8 million, are bandwidth-intensive smart phones, laptops and tablets, a 238% increase since 2010.
The report comes as the FCC is collecting data on its next report on the state of the wireless mobile marketplace.
(Photo via Pabak Sarkar's Flickr. Image taken on Feb. 15, 2017 and used per Creative Commons 2.0 license. The photo was cropped to fit 9x16 aspect ratio.)
