In just about four years, the American-created wireless world has joined the ranks of the U.S. automobile industry, the motion picture industry, computer and chip industry – and in some cases – several of these industries rolled up together – as a leading force in the U.S. economy. According to a report released yesterday by CTIA, America’s wireless industry “serves as an integral driver of America’s economy by annually generating more than $194.8 billion of domestic economic value and more than $282.1 billion in U.S. GDP.” The report, an update by Recon Analytics that the same group performed in 2012 and now called “The Wireless Industry: Revisiting Spectrum, The Essential Engine of U.S. Economic Growth,” looks at how the industry grew between 2011 and 2014, and how licensed spectrum is the foundation to leading the world with the best products and services.
With unemployment hitting a high-mark in 2010, jobs have been the top talking point for politicians and those who need them. The report shows that “more than 4.6 million Americans are directly or indirectly employed by the wireless industry. Direct jobs increased 64 percent from 2011, to more than 642,000 across America.” It finds the “app economy,” which was emerging ten years ago, grew from $10 billion in 2011, to become a $36 billion unstoppable force in 2014.
With that comes global impact. “America’s wireless industry has a significant global economic impact, reaching almost $333 billion, which is up 71 percent from 2011. And as a bonus, the report notes the “annual U.S. wireless consumer surplus – the extent of how users value wireless services in excess of what they currently pay – using voice minutes, SMS and broadband, is $640.9 billion.”
Written by Roger Entner, Recon Analytics’ founder and lead analyst, the report emphasizes the importance that wireless has in today’s society. “The wireless industry is now larger than the computer systems design industry, legal, publishing (including software), agriculture, petroleum and coal production, and other storied sectors which themselves are benefiting from wireless.” And it has spawned a slew of offshoots as well. “As the wireless industry has grown, it has become the midwife of countless new businesses— conceived from the fertile minds of American entrepreneurs—that sprouted where nothing existed a few short years earlier. Apps, which were a $10 billion phenomenon in 2011, became a $36 billion juggernaut in 2014. But apps haven’t gotten there entirely by themselves. Wireless operators are more indispensable than ever because without the connectivity they provide none of this would be possible.”
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