Investment in the US mobile industry reached USD 29.9 billion in 2020, up from USD 29.1 billion the previous year and a five-year high driven by the expansion of 5G networks and demand for data services. According to industry group CTIA's latest annual survey, the US accounted for 18 percent of global mobile capex last year, while the country has only 4 percent of the world's population and 6 percent of mobile connections.
The number of cell sites across the country passed 417,000 at year-end, up from nearly 396,000 at the end of 2019. CTIA said nearly 68,000 sites have been added in the past two years following important federal reforms to the siting process. The increase was driven by the roll-out of 5G networks, which grew by around 50 percent in 2020 to cover over 300 million people. The first 5G network to reach nationwide coverage in the US did so twice as fast as 4G, and all three major providers built nationwide networks 42 percent faster than 4G.
In terms of traffic, the mobile networks handled 42.2 trillion MB in 2020, roughly triple the amount five years earlier. The number of SMS/MMS rose by 119 billion last year, to a total of 2.2 trillion, and voice traffic reached 2.9 trillion minutes. The total number of mobile connections was 468.9 million at the end of 2020, of which 41 percent were data-only devices.
