Transition to 5G Now Fully Underway, CTIA Says, With Mobile Data Quadrupling Since 2014

The U.S. wireless industry is starting the transition from 4G to 5G, “with significant growth in cell sites and data-only devices,” CTIA said Tuesday in its annual survey. “Mobile data continues to skyrocket.” The association reported Americans used a record 15.7 trillion megabytes of mobile data in 2017 -- nearly quadrupling since 2014. The IoT is starting to surge, the group said. Data-only devices in the U.S., including connected cars, IoT devices and wearables, increased 20 percent in 2017 to 126.4 million. CTIA found industry deployed a record 323,448 cellsites at the end of 2017. “Analysts project that wireless carriers will need to deploy roughly 800,000 modern wireless antennas -- small cells -- in the next few years,” CTIA said.