1. In 2006, wireless consumers were contributing about 33% of the federal Universal Service Fund, while wireless providers withdrew only about 16% of the funds available.
2. On average, wireless consumers pay 14.5% of their bill in taxes and fees – that’s more than twice the tax-rate for general goods and services.
3. 99% of Americans are now living in counties in which next-generation wireless services are available.
4. The number of wireless complaints to the FCC fell 40% from 3Q05 to 3Q06.
5. There are more than 229 million wireless subscribers in America.
6. Wireless service was once projected to be a niche market appealing to a maximum of 900,000 by the year 2000.
7. According to the FCC, 35% of the growth in all reported high-speed lines between June, 2005 to December, 2005 was attributable to mobile wireless.
8. In 2003, wireless service providers’ revenues constituted more than $11.5 billion of California’s economy.
9. Available to more than 93% of mobile subscribers, Wireless AMBER Alerts is an initiative that allows wireless subscribers to opt in to receive Wireless AMBER Alerts as free text messages on their cell phones.
10. 94% of Americans are now living in counties with four or more wireless service providers.
11. Since a national regulatory framework for wireless was introduced, wireless minutes of use have increased almost 5000% from 17 billion in the first six months of 1995, to more than 857 billion in the first half of 2006.
12. As of 3Q06, the FCC reported a complaint rate of 0.00185% (19 per million subscribers).
13. In 2005, the average compensation of a wireless employee in Pennsylvania was $55,085. This is more than double both the statewide ($24,591) and national ($25,035) per capita incomes, and more than both the statewide ($44,537) and national ($46,242) median household incomes.
14. As of mid-year 2006, the average wireless bill in the US was less than $50.00.
15. The FCC has reported that “the United States continues to lead the world in average minutes of use per subscriber” – individual customers in the U.S. use five times the number of minutes as the average European subscriber.
16. The wireless industry contributed $92 billion the United States GDP in 2004.
17. In the first 6 months of 2006, the wireless industry added approximately 63,000 new subscribers per day.
18. The wireless industry has been repeatedly judged to be effectively competitive by the FCC.
19. Nebraska has the highest effective wireless tax rate at more than 21%, including fees and surcharges.
20. Wireless companies take out $1 for every $5 they’ve contributed to the Universal Service Fund, while ILECs have taken out $3 for every $1 contributed.
21. According to Dr. Jerry Hausman, the MacDonald professor of Economics at MIT, “The ETF reduces carriers’ cost of serving all customers by reducing transaction costs and the wireless industry is intensely competitive. Thus, prohibiting carriers from charging ETF’s will cause prices for wireless services and/or equipment to be higher than they otherwise would have been.”
22. Since a national regulatory framework was introduced for wireless, subscribership has grown by more than 679%.
23. Market research has attributed 52% of mobile content consumption in the U.S. to Hispanic wireless users.
24. The effective rate of taxation on wireless service increased nine times faster than the rate on other taxable goods and services between January 2003 and July 2005.
25. Since a national regulatory framework was introduced, wireless subscribers have used almost 5,000% more minutes per six month period.
26. Indiana, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Texas all impose a sales tax on wireless communications, but also impose an additional gross receipts or excise tax on wireless communications.
27. In 2005, the average pay of a wireless employee in New York was $69,277. This is more than double both the statewide ($28,158) and national ($25,035) per capita incomes, and is substantially more than both the statewide ($59,686) and national ($55,832) median family incomes.
28. According to Guerilla Economics, the elimination of Texas’s 6.25% sales tax on capitol investments will encourage an estimated $146.85 million in additional invested capital in the state.
29. From 2001 to 2005 wireless companies received a little more than $1 billion of USF monies while ILECS received more than $20 billion over the same period.
30. There are more than 2.3 billion mobile subscribers worldwide.
31. Wireless companies have invested almost $190 billion in capital since the introduction of the national regulatory framework, not including tens of billions paid to the U.S. Treasury for spectrum.
32. Wireless companies collectively invest more than $20 billion per year to improve their networks and deliver service to consumers.
33. More than 12.5 billion text messages were sent in June 2006, up 70% from June 2005.
34. According to Telephia, Detroit and Minneapolis-St. Paul have the highest rate of household wireless substitution among the 20 largest cities, with Detroit and Minneapolis-St. Paul posting household wireless substitution rates of 19% and 15.2% by the middle of 2006.
35. Six of the ten most populated states: California, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois and Pennsylvania are on the top ten list of States with the highest tax rates on wireless.
36. According to the Mobile Marketing Association, by 2011 more than half of brands are expected to spend between 5% and 25% of their marketing budget on mobile marketing.
37. Federal government statistics on wireless use indicated more than 51% of rural American households had wireless phones, compared to 54% of all America households.
38. Economist Gregory Sidak estimates that a one-percent decrease in wireless prices would “increase U.S. GDP by between $6.8 billion and $7.8 billion within two years of the tax reduction.”
39. As of December 2005, there were 15,620,248 wireless subscribers in the state of Texas, representing more than 68% of the state’s population.
40. During the June 2005 to June 2006 period, the number of casual users for internet access to information services increased by 756%.
41. As of December 2005, there were 3,370,196 wireless subscribers in the state of Minnesota, representing approximately 68% of the state’s population.
42. As of mid-year 2006 there were approximately 180 wireless licensees.
43. There was a 293% increase in the number of employees of the wireless industry since the national framework was introduced.
44. More than 8% of households in the United States are wireless-only, having “cut the cord” and disposed of their landline telephones.
45. As of 2006, wireless carriers paid more than $11 billion in wages a year to their employees.
46. Wireless data revenues comprised almost 11% of total wireless revenues in the first months of 2006.
47. More than 93% of subscribers are served by carriers that are signatories to CTIA’s Consumer Code for Wireless Service.
48. Wireless services generate more than $113 billion in revenues annually.
49. As stated by Telephia, the mobile internet population in the U.S. reached almost 35 million by the middle of 2006.
50. The FCC estimates that more than 98% of all wireless subscribers are digital.
51. Since 1995, wireless networks have been repeatedly rebuilt, with next generation digital networks replacing almost all of the original analog networks nationwide.
52. Thirty-nine percent of all communications taxes (~$7B in 2000) constitute “excess” taxes (i.e. far in excess of the tax burden imposed upon main street business).
53. According to the Yankee Group, more than 20 million customers use prepaid wireless service.
54. Wireless data revenues increased 70.4% between mid-year 2005 and mid-year 2006.
55. 56% of devices on participating carriers’ network were capable of browsing the web.
56. Ovum has stated that 2.5% of all jobs in the US are dependent upon the wireless industry.
57. According to M:Metrics, 15% of all U.S. wireless customers sent photo messages in October 2006.
58. As per In-Stat, more than 75% of all U.S. businesses use at least one wireless data application.
59. According to comScore Networks, 19% of U.S. Internet users access the web from their mobile devices.
60. The FCC has reported that “mobile calls continue to be significantly less expensive on a per minute basis in the United States than in Western Europe and Japan.”
61. As per the NPD Group, by mid-2006, 42% of all wireless subscribers used their wireless phone as their primary phone.
62. According to Telephia, more than 2,000 video titles are now available to wireless subscribers over their mobile devices.
63. By the middle of 2006, almost half of wireless customers in the U.S. were using some form of wireless data – surfing the wireless web, sending text and photo-messages, or downloading and playing games, ringtones, or music files.
64. Globally, more than 200 mobile broadband devices have been introduced.
65. As stated by M:Metrics, almost 75 million U.S. wireless customers sent text messages in October 2006.
66. Since a national framework was introduced, the average local monthly wireless bill has fallen approximately 30% in inflation adjusted dollars.
67. According to the NPD Group, 12% of U.S. wireless customers sent picture messages in September 2006 – up from 4% in January 2006.
68. As per Telephia, in the third quarter 2006, about 23.5 million U.S. wireless subscribers had music players on their handsets, and more than 2 million downloaded full music tracks.
69. There are hundreds of thousands of wireless 911 calls made per day.
70. As stated by M:Metrics, in October 2006, almost 9% of U.S. wireless customers sent personal e-mail, and more than 5% sent business e-mail, using their wireless devices.
71. Competing wireless broadband technologies are being deployed across America, with higher-speed EVDO and WCDMA/HSDPA technologies now available in counties containing more than 63% and 20% of the U.S. population, respectively.
72. Two carriers have announced that they will spend more than $5.2 billion in building new 3G and 4G networks between 2007 and 2008.
73. As per ABI Research, North American subscriptions to “personal locator services” using GPS-enabled mobile phones will grow to more than 20 million by 2011.
74. ComScore Networks reports that 33% of wireless subscribers say that they feel lost without their wireless phone.
75. In-Stat indicates that 15% of wireless customers in the U.S. carry two devices.
76. According to M:Metrics, almost 20% of teen wireless customers sent photo messages in the U.S. in October 2006.
77. Lehman Brothers predicts that mobile TV will grow to a $15 billion market by 2009.
78. Multiple MVNOs compete in the wireless marketplace, serving approximately 10% of wireless customers.
79. As stated by Gartner, global handset sales will reach 986 million in 2006. 80. As per Ovum, by 2015, the wireless industry in the United States could employ more than 6.5 million people.
81. According to the Mobile Marketing Association, by 2008, 89% of brands will use text and multimedia messaging to reach their audiences.
82. In the first six months of 2006, the number of subscribers to two-way SMS grew by 88%.
83. According to M:Metrics, more than 6% of teen wireless customers sent video messages in the U.S. in October 2006.
84. If the wireless telecom industry were a country, its economy would be bigger than that of Egypt, and, if measured by GDP, and would rank as the 46th largest country in the world.
85. Based on the current 15% annual growth rate enjoyed by the wireless industry, in the next 5 years wireless will become a larger sector of the US economy than both the agriculture and automobile sectors.
86. According to the Mobile Marketing Association, 40% of global brands have already deployed test messaging marketing campaigns.
87. As of December 2005, there were 6,613,341 wireless subscribers in the state of Michigan, representing more than 67% of the state’s population.
88. Wireless is a highly competitive industry – as recently as last week, the wireless space welcomed a new competitor, as Apple Inc. introduced the iPhone.
89. The FCC has reported that “The J.D. Power and Associates 2006 Wireless Call Quality Study found that the quality of mobile telephone service improved in the past year, with reported problems per 100 calls reaching the lowest level since the inaugural study in 2003.”
90. Per Telephia, as of the third quarter 2006, nearly 8 million wireless subscribers were capturing videos with their mobile devices.
91. In California, the city of Los Angeles imposes a 10% general-purpose tax on consumers of wireless service.
92. According to the NPD Group, sales of Smartphones in the U.S. rose from 2% of all new wireless phones sales as of early 2006 to 6% in the fourth quarter.
93. Gartner indicates almost 107 million camera phones were sold in to customers in North America in 2006, up from almost 76 million in 2005.
94. Mobile to mobile calling has increased more than 78% in the June 2002 to June 2006 period.
95. ComScore Networks reports that 16% of wireless subscribers say that web browsing was a highly important feature in choosing a new wireless plan.
96. Approximately 9% of all reported wireless subscribers are prepaid.
97. Wireless users sent more than 64.8 billion text messages in the first six month of 2006.
98. It took more than 21 years for color televisions to reach 100 million consumers, more than 90 years for landline service to reach 100 million consumers and less than 17 years for wireless to reach 100 million consumers.
99. The wireless industry’s largest carriers have teamed with FEMA and the Association of Public Television Stations to trial a new technology that will be able to deliver emergency alerts to a limited number of subscribers over existing messaging systems.
100. Merrill Lynch indicates the worldwide penetration rate for mobile-phones is twice that of landline phones.
Source: http://www.ctia.org
