Wireless Data Use Up 20 Percent Last Year, CTIA Finds
In 2025, the group found fixed wireless additions doubled cable losses
WASHINGTON, Sept. 10, 2026 – Wireless data use increased 20 percent year-over-year in 2025, according to a new survey from mobile industry group CTIA.
That’s compared to a 32 percent increase in 2024 and 35 percent increase in 2023. In total, Americans used 159.3 trillion megabytes of wireless data in 2025.
Despite the slowdown in growth, CTIA said in its report it expected data demand to quadruple by 2032, partially driven by AI, which the group projected to consume a third of broadband traffic by 2034.
The group wrote that the projected demand required more spectrum auctions to give the industry more capacity.
“Supporting the network traffic AI will demand requires a steady pipeline of licensed, mid-band spectrum and continued infrastructure investment,” CTIA wrote.
The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have been receptive to the industry’s desire for additional spectrum. The Federal Communications Commission is set to auction 160 megahertz of upper C-band spectrum next year, and is planning three additional auctions in 2028, including in the 2.7 GigaHertz (GHz) band.
Those are the result of budget legislation passed last summer that tasked the FCC with auctioning 800 megahertz, including 500 megahertz of federal spectrum like 2.7 GHz. Other bands being reviewed by the Commerce Department include the 4.4 GHz and lower 7 GHz bands.
Pro spectrum sharing group WifiForward noted on X Thursday that a large amount of wireless traffic is offloaded via unlicensed Wi-Fi.
The CTIA report also found that carriers spent $30 billion expanding or upgrading their networks in 2025, on par with the previous two years. The group found wireless service prices fell 4.1 percent from 2024-2025, and price per gigabyte of data used fell 21 percent.
Fixed wireless
CTIA’s report also found that fixed wireless net additions in 2025 totaled 3.9 million, more than double the subscriber losses from cable ISPs during the same period.
“For the fourth consecutive year, virtually all net growth in the home broadband market came from fixed wireless offerings,” the group wrote.
That lines up with what New Street Research has found. In a report late last year, the group said it expected fixed wireless to account for effectively all industry growth in 2026 as well. New Street analysts led by David Barden wrote then that fixed wireless growth should start to slow in 2027 and wireline growth, driven by fiber, would begin to recover.
After the upper C-band auction next year, New Street estimated the three carriers would have excess capacity to handle about 36 million fixed wireless subscribers.
CTIA’s report said that about 16 million households currently subscribe to fixed wireless. That’s about what the carriers had reported at the end of last year, before T-Mobile stopped reporting subscriber numbers.
