“US mobile data traffic stats need careful scrutiny (Analyst Angle)”

“Recently, the US mobile operators’ trade association CTIA released data from its annual survey of members. Its headline focused on a very large number – 100 trillion megabytes – which CTIA claims was the total amount of mobile data traffic in the US in 2023. Unsurprisingly, CTIA then pivots to talking about obtaining more mid-band spectrum and the need for exclusive national licenses.

But problematically, CTIA’s announcement leaves multiple questions unanswered – and relies on multiple non-sequiturs in arriving at its policy demands.

The US is unusual in how data such as this are published. In most countries, the national regulatory agency or telecoms ministry publishes data on the numbers of subscribers, volumes of voice and data traffic, network coverage and much more. Agencies such as UK’s Ofcom, France’s ARCEP, Japan’s MIC, China’s MIIT and many others collect information from licensed operators, aggregate it and publish a variety of statistical outputs for use by policymakers, investors, analysts and others.

But in the US, the FCC and other agencies put out very little statistical data of this type. Instead, this is left to bodies like the CTIA, which release data primarily to support their own lobbying positions, rather than as an unbiased snapshot of the marketplace. They can and do frame data in a way that supports their position on topics such as spectrum policy.

At a trivial level, this can easily be seen in the recent release. Nobody counts mobile data in megabytes (MB) anymore – most plans and analysis have used gigabytes, or even terabytes, for ten years or more. The only reason that CTIA chose that metric is to create a large number for the press release. I guess we should feel relieved they didn’t spell out ONE HUNDRED TRILLION in all-caps, too.”